Systems, Processes and Infrastructure Improvements in the Drug and Rehabilitation Ward in Concord Hospital - Case Study Example

Systems, Processes and Infrastructure Improvements in the Drug and Rehabilitation Ward in Concord Hospital, Sydney Student’s Name Institution Systems, Processes and Infrastructure Improvements in the Drug and Rehabilitation Ward in Concord Hospital Concord Repatriation General Hospital (CRGH) is a possession of the University of Sydney. It is a teaching hospital as well as a referral facility. The hospital offers a range of services that can be categorised as sub specialty and specialty services (Lih et al., 2011). The main services of the hospital are laparoscopic and colorectal surgery, rehabilitation and geriatrics medicine, and treatment services for bones and joints, cancer services, molecular biology, haematology, respiratory medicine among others (Jiang et al., 2012; Luo, 2012). The need for quality services has led to the creation of various departments at the hospital, among them the Drug and Rehabilitation Ward. The drug and rehabilitation ward is the section that provides services to drug addicts, young adults and children with various disabilities, and old people in the society together with their caregivers (Rochat et al., 2009). Members of the society who are faced with illnesses, accidents, injury or chronic pain are also offered rehabilitation by the department (Neubeck, Freedman, Briffa, Bauman, & Redfern, 2011). Concord Hospital has done a lot to ensure the safety and quality of the medical services it delivers. This paper looks into the various improvements in the systems, processes and infrastructure of the Drug and Rehabilitation Ward at Concord Hospital, which have been undertaken to improve the safety and quality of its services. A system is a set of components that are interdependent and which interact to form a single whole; the components must be well linked to each other to function well (Carpenter, 2012). Similarly, the health care system also has components, including institutions, people and resources. Institutions are the places or facilities where health care services are provided, while the people involved include patients, doctors and nurses. On the other hand, resources refer to the instruments used to deliver the services to the patients to meet their needs. A safety system also has components, including people, hazards and resources. The people are those who are exposed to risks and have the duty to control them. Hazards are the causes of the unsafe situations that people may be exposed to; resources are used to control and prevent the hazards from occurring. The concept of a safety system involves a strategy for risk management that identifies and analyses hazards before ultimately providing a remedy to control them (Smith & Simpson, 2010). The Drug and Rehabilitation department has implemented several improvements in its systems within the last twelve months to improve the quality of health care services and adhere to the required safety standards. Firstly, Concord Hospital has managed to facilitate the setting up of a local dementia network. This network is aimed at the creation of a joint planning system involving NGOs, as well as private and public providers of dementia care. The dementia network has been specifically designed to improve the patient care systems at the hospital. This has been made possible by the service provider networks, which have created strong links among the caregivers, clinicians, health related organisations and other relevant agencies (Reisinger & Turner, 2012). The dementia networks have also given rise to high quality service delivery by encouraging more research and development, better planning and education on various drug related symptoms and psychotic disorders. The local dementia networks implemented by Concord Hospital are aimed at making sure there is an improvement in the rate at which the patients respond to its health care and rehabilitation systems and ensuring prompt access of drug treatment and rehabilitation services. Additionally, the treatment and rehabilitation services given to the individuals undergoing rehabilitation by hospital workers and the care get from their families are highly coordinated. Dementia networks improve the quality of health care received by patients, as doctors and caregivers have the chance to closely monitor how the patient progresses. On the other hand, the duty of the caregiver is made easier by the use of the network. The health practitioners monitor the progress of the clients and take prompt action whenever necessary. The family members of the patients are able to follow their progress during the rehabilitation. These linkages ensure that the patients’ health and safety standards are upheld, as immediate action is taken as soon as any problem occurs. The Carer Action Plan of the hospital has also ensured success in enhancing the quality of its health care services at the Drug and Rehabilitation Ward. The development of the action plan has seen many patients undergo rehabilitation and receive the needed care and attention from their caregivers in a prompt manner. The Carer Action Plan was drafted in 2007 and implementation began in December, 2008. A more vigorous implementation of the plan occurred in 2012 to ensure that the health and safety standards of patients were highly adhered to. The plan was developed with the goals of ensuring continuous checkups among the population, providing desirable and high-quality medical attention to the population and managing the hospitals’ services in the most appropriate way. To succeed in these goals, the plan gave a lot of attention to the recognition of caregivers. The plan insisted on respecting and valuing caregivers, identifying those of them who are not adequately recognised, improving the quality of services given to them and their patients, treating them as partners and helping them juggle their caring duties with other duties. The carers, patients under rehabilitation and their families have all benefited from the implementation of Carer Action Plan. The carers are motivated in what they do as they are recognised and supported (Nathan, Johnston, & Braithwaite, 2011). This makes the families receive better aid in caring for the patients. The improved levels of care saw the patients’ health and safety standards raised (Nay & Garratt, 2010). Processes refer to series of changes, functions and actions that are undertaken to bring a desired result (Harvey, 2010). The vision of the Drug and Rehabilitation department of offering quality care and rehabilitation has seen the Concord Hospital develop several processes and functions to improve the rehabilitation services given to patients. Heath care and safety processes refer to actions aimed at achieving the desired safety standards of medical services. The provision of interpreter services and training to the staff members of the Drug and Rehabilitation ward has seen a rise in the handling of patients from diverse communities (Ngo-Metzger et al., 2007). The staff members have been trained over the last twelve months on issues on important issues such as cultural diversity and community development. The hospital has also improved this by introducing interpreters who work with phone services, community settings, and outpatient and inpatient services. As a result, the different cultural practices have been embraced by the hospital and its staff. Patients who speak different languages are easily treated at the hospital with the aid of interpreter services. The staff members of the ward are also more supportive, as they understand most of the cultural practices and they appreciate that patients come from different cultural backgrounds (Hunt & Voogd, 2008). The communal and interpreter services have seen the caregivers, patients and their families benefit even more from the rehabilitation process. The carers are able to understand the culture of the patients and communicate with clinical officers with the help of interpreters in case of language barrier. Consequently, caregivers are able to understand their patients and the illnesses they have better, by this means enhancing their health and safety (Temple & Edwards, 2008). The ward’s management has also supported the increment of the funding given to community nursing services by Home and Community Care (HACC). The increment in financing community nursing services has seen many patients undergo rehabilitation and receive better health care. Many community nurses become motivated in their duties when they are well paid (Rosenthal et al., 2010). The good pay has seen the number of people interested in undertaking community nursing as a career increase. The improvement of funding to community health nurses has had a significant impact on the carers, patients undergoing rehabilitation, and their families. The medication given to the patients under rehabilitation is also more effective, as the motivated nurses are able to reach them easily (Lundy & Janes, 2009). The medicines are also easily accessible, giving the caregivers an easy time. The nurses are also able to offer outpatient services to rehabilitation patients; they help the carers carry out their work where necessary. The assistance and sharing of ideas make the caring process more effective. The families of the rehabilitation patients get a comprehensive understanding of the conditions that the patients are undergoing, as they get explanations from the nurses and caregivers. They have basic information of how they are expected to handle the patients. On the other hand, the patients also enjoy better services as all the stakeholders, including their families, caregivers and community nurses, are there to take care of them. An infrastructure refers to an organisational or physical setup that an enterprise or society requires for its operations to be smooth. The technical structures that provide support to the society are referred to as infrastructure. Infrastructures constitute all the interrelated physical components of a system that provide goods and services, which are essential in sustaining and enhancing people’s living conditions (Fulmer, 2009). Health institutions are examples of soft infrastructure as they aim at raising or maintaining the health of patients. The Drug and Rehabilitation ward has implemented several infrastructural improvements to ensure a rise in the quality of health care and the safety of patients undergoing rehabilitation. Transport services have also been improved at the hospital to ease access to the ward. This infrastructural improvement has been made possible by external funds from the government. Good roads around the hospital have also helped in managing emergencies (Rodrigue, Comtois, & Slack, 2009). Caregivers, clients and families have also benefited a lot from the improvement of the transport system. Many lives are saved, as clients are quickly rushed to the hospital. Carers are able to spend lesser time on the roads when visiting the patients in the ward (Button, 2010). Doctors and nurses also reach the hospitals in time when they are called to handle emergency issues; as a result, the health and safety of the patients are not compromised. The expansion of the road network outside the ward has been accompanied by improvement of similar infrastructure within the building’s compound. The ward’s management has developed an improved parking facility to ease access by people with vehicles. Although the ease of accessibility by vehicles within the compound was aimed at benefiting the community, it has since proved to be beneficial to everyone, including the doctors, nurses, caregivers, clients and their families; the hospital’s management personnel also park within the compound. The convenient parking lots have enabled the hospital to respond efficiently to emergencies (Kim, Chung, & Park, 2010). Resources from outside the ward are easily transported inside and time is saved (Leephakpreeda, 2007). The development of more seating clinics in the ward has also seen the health care and safety standards accorded to patients improve. Patients who have disabilities require specialised seats. Such patients may be exposed to simple or complex disabilities and some are dependent on wheelchairs (Parmanto et al., 2010). Only Liverpool Hospital had specialised seats in 2007 in the region; several plans were developed to come up with such clinics in other rehabilitation wards in the area, including the one at Concord Hospital. By January, 2012, implementation had taken place in many of them. The rise of the number of patients who need rehabilitation has seen a continuous construction of seating wards in more places in the hospital with the aim of maintaining high quality and safe health care practices. The seating clinics have proved very vital to the caregivers, patients and their family members. The caregivers find it easy to handle patients who need special seating. The patients with the disabilities have comfortable sitting places and the caregivers do not have to support them when they are seated. The family members also feel safer, as physically challenged patients are well looked after. The quality of health care given to the patients and their safety are enhanced by the use of such hospitals. They are exposed to minimum risk of falling while in the hospital, as the seats are specially meant to support them in comfortable positions. The other improvements at the ward involve technology infrastructure. Technological changes call for improvements in systems, processes and infrastructure that support the various aspects of life (Xu, Weissburg, Newell, & Crittenden, 2012). The desire to improve the quality of services has seen Concord strive to undertake technological changes to maintain desirable levels of competitive advantage. The drug and rehabilitation ward at Concord Hospital has also embraced technology by using efficient medical equipment, electronic health records and other modern infrastructure. Health care and safety are currently considered basic requirements and organisations offering health and safety services must strive to improve their services to respond to the current demand and technological changes (Carayon et al., 2013). This paper addresses the changes, which have occurred in the systems, processes and infrastructure at the drug and rehabilitation ward in the Concord Hospital within the last twelve months. The drug and rehabilitation ward has laid several strategic plans aimed at improving the quality and safety of the health care services given to patients. Improvements like introduction of the Carer Support Plan, the use of dementia networks, expansion of transport services, construction of seating hospitals, facilitation of interpreter and training services, and the support of the funding of community nursing services have seen the hospital improve the quality of health care services and safety of the patients at the drug and rehabilitation ward. 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