Time for rehab

St John of God Mt Lawley Hospital is setting the rehabilitation standard for our organisation to become a centre of excellence with their work towards this goal recently highlighted at a national conference.

21 Dec 2022

Coleen Fossy at reception desk or rehabilitation unit

The hospital’s Specialist Rehabilitation Services Nurse Unit Manager Colleen Fossey recently presented at the Australian Rehabilitation Nurses Association conference highlighting the work being done to improve patient experiences within the unit.

“Following a gap analysis against the Australasian Faculty of Rehabilitation Medicine Standards and the Australasian Rehabilitation Nurses Association scope of practice position statement, the

Specialist Rehabilitation Services team led a series of initiatives to achieve their vision,” she said.
“One major initiative was to ensure the provision of three hours of therapy per patient per day. The team was challenged to reconsider their perception of what was ‘therapy’ and who could provide it to include nurses, music, art and pet therapists.

“Significantly, while nurses practice with a rehabilitation focus, they did not recognise themselves as therapists. Knowing this, the team developed a framework, which provides education, peer and self-assessments, which enabled nurses to advance from novice to specialists in the field.”

Additional changes within the unit included developing a rehabilitation booklet to help patients understand what to expect, increased allied health, nursing and medical caregivers, redesigned the gym with patient feedback, and introduced a daily tracker.

Patient feedback highlighted the importance of these changes, with an improvement in the number of patients completing their feedback (aided in part by providing an iPad for this purpose), and a reduction in the number of patients providing negative feedback.

“Together, the initiatives have led to a marked improvement in patient experience, which is seen in an overall increase in the net promoter score and decline in the number of scores below 5/10,” Colleen said.

“It was wonderful to be able to present our achievements and showcase St John of God Mt Lawley Hospital at such a conference. I was pleased to have several people approach me after the talk to ask me about our processes and success rates, which I hope they are able to use in their own hospitals.”