Healthcare Assignment: NSQHS Standard 6 and Practice Improvement

This healthcare assignment critically analyzes the 6th Standard of the National Safety and Quality Health Service Standards (NSQHS), focusing on 'Communicating for Safety'. The report examines the standard's relationship to authority gradients, effective communication, and accountability within healthcare settings. It emphasizes the importance of clear and timely communication among clinicians, patients, and their families, as well as the role of clinical handover in ensuring patient safety. The assignment also explores practical applications of the 6th Standard for practice improvement, suggesting measures such as safety hurdles, team meetings to define critical information, and patient safety checks to enhance communication quality and guarantee patient safety. The analysis is supported by relevant literature and guidelines, providing a comprehensive overview of the standard's implications and practical implementations within the Australian healthcare context.

Running head: HEALTHCARE ASSIGNMENT
HEALTHCARE ASSIGNMENT
Name of the Student:
Name of the University:
Author Note:

1HEALTHCARE ASSIGNMENT
The sixth quality standard of the National Health and Safety Standard emphasis upon
the principle of ‘Communicating for Safety’. Leaders and care professionals within a
healthcare system are entitled to support and maintain effective communication with patients,
family members of the patient as well as the multidisciplinary team of care professionals in
order to promote positive patient outcome. The standard 6 of the NSQHS document expects
care professionals such as clinicians and multidisciplinary team of professionals to effectively
coordinate with one another for the purpose of shared decision making in order to render
improved patient outcome. Under the Action 6.7, it has been mentioned that nursing
professionals must practice in collaboration with the multidisciplinary team of care
professionals and must convey a precise and clear information during the process of clinical
handover in accordance to the best-practice guidelines
(Nationalstandards.safetyandquality.gov.au, 2019). In addition to this, care professionals
must collectively identify relevant risks in context to service provision and clearly identify
the needs of the patient and the family members of the patient. According to the Action 6.4,
care professionals must collaborate to collectively define the minimum information to be
shared at each type of clinical handover prevalent within the organizational context. This
would allow a smooth flow of information across the authority gradient and contribute to
effective care delivery and positive patient outcome. In addition to this, the Action 6.1,
expects care professionals to make use of the clinical governance standard so as to implement
procedure and policies in favour of effective communication within the health care setting
(Nationalstandards.safetyandquality.gov.au, 2019). Further, Action 6.1 also states that care
professionals must be able to manage risks that are associated with clinical communication
issues and identify training needs so as to promote effective and coordinated clinical
communication. Further, Action 6.9 suggests that clinicians and multidisciplinary team of
care professionals must effectively communicate with one another in a timely manner so as to

2HEALTHCARE ASSIGNMENT
convey critical information related to the patient to the family members of the patient as well
as the clinicians who are entitled to make important decisions in relation to the patient’s
treatment (Nationalstandards.safetyandquality.gov.au, 2019). At the same time, care
professionals must effectively communicate with the family members and the care providers
of the patient according to the wishes of the patient. It should be ensured at each step that
critical information must be communicated in a timely manner so as to ensure patient safety.
Also, under the Action 6.11, care professionals must actively document critical information,
risks, reassessment processes and outcomes as well as changes to care plan so as to hold
shared accountability for delivering effective patient care
(Nationalstandards.safetyandquality.gov.au, 2019).
The healthcare organization must ensure that the latest versions of the policies and
procedures are available and are accessible to the care professionals. Further, the organization
must establish safety and quality systems to monitor the implementation of the policies,
ensure risk management and identify the needs to include training for clinical
communications. In order to ensure that critical patient information is shared between the
multidisciplinary team of professionals, brief ‘safety-hurdles’ can be conducted where
professionals can be encouraged to talk about safety issues and identified patient risks
(Gluyas, 2015). Also, a brief meeting can be conducted with the team of care professionals so
as to decide the ‘set of critical information’ that would be communicated at each handover.
This would help in avoiding confusion and at the same time would ensure better exchange of
critical information. In addition to this, the minimum information to be shared could be
finalized with the team by method of ‘dot voting’ (Gluyas, 2015). This would help to avoid
difference in opinion and facilitate shared decision making. Further, inclusion of a patient
safety check at the end of the clinical handover could help in identifying patient priority.

3HEALTHCARE ASSIGNMENT
Upon adopting these measures the quality of effective communication could be improved and
patient safety could be guaranteed.

4HEALTHCARE ASSIGNMENT
References:
Gluyas, H. (2015). Effective communication and teamwork promotes patient safety. Nursing
Standard (2014+), 29(49), 50.
Nationalstandards.safetyandquality.gov.au (2019). Clinical handover. [online]
Nationalstandards.safetyandquality.gov.au. Available at:
https://www.nationalstandards.safetyandquality.gov.au/6.-communicating-safety/
communication-clinical-handover/clinical-handover [Accessed 15 Apr. 2019].