Page 1252 - Week 04 - Thursday, 5 May 2022
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stage of the Towards a Safer Culture strategy, because we always recognised that this was a first step strategy and that we were not going to change the culture overnight.
Priority action 14 of the strategy was a community, consumer and carer information campaign with the objective of increasing community awareness of standards of behaviour and the rights of ACT Health employees. The “be kind and respectful to our nurses and midwives” community awareness campaign is primarily an external-facing action of the strategy, and many members will have seen the materials around. While specifically not targeting staff, the campaign is designed to assist staff to feel supported and encourage them to speak up when they experience or witness unacceptable behaviour.
In the evaluation, Canberra community respondents revealed a direct awareness of occupational violence towards nurses and midwives and strong support of initiatives to address occupational violence, with about 70 per cent believing that the campaign could reduce occupational violence.
The reach and impact of the communication strategy has been summarised in the occupational violence campaign performance report. The outcomes align with the findings of the task strategy evaluation, which found strong support of the initiatives to address occupational violence against nurses and midwives.
As I mentioned earlier, the task strategy is one system-wide approach, but it sits alongside the Canberra Health Services occupational violence prevention program, which was launched in April 2020, and has resulted in numerous improvements in the way that Canberra Health Services identifies and manages occupational violence risk to keep staff and patients safe.
The strategy includes eight strategic domains for the prevention and management of occupational violence: improved governance, prevention, training, response, reporting, support, investigation and staff/consumer awareness. Some of these things that directly relate to the issues that Minister Davidson has indicated will be considered in the inquiry into Dhulwa. As we both talked about, it is quite a specific environment with specific challenges.
Seventy per cent of the occupational violence strategy had been completed by April 2022. Investment in the CHS occupational violence program has included dedicated staff to the prevention program, the purchase of equipment to improve individual safety across Canberra Health Services, and consumer and visitor awareness materials. Anyone who has been in the hospital would have seen those materials.
There has been specific work in relation to high-risk areas, including the implementation of a behaviours of concern screening tool in higher risk areas to identify indicators of occupational violence early so that they can be addressed, and use of the newly developed behaviours of concern safety management plan for individual patients who are at higher risk of being involved in occupational violence incidents. This safety plan details patient triggers, communication preferences and strategies specific to the patient to allow staff to better prevent and manage occupational violence incidents.
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