Page 3765 - Week 11 - Thursday, 24 November 2022
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Communications and engagement are a focus for keeping our staff up to date and to facilitate networks and groups for staff, and these include WhatsApp groups and regular wellbeing emails.
There has also been a significant focus on restructuring workloads and making model-of-care changes. For example, as part of the ongoing work to reduce JMO workloads this is considering partnered pharmacist medication charting; increased phlebotomy services; and increased training of registered nurses. Both Canberra Hospital and Calvary Public Hospital Bruce have received facility accreditation of the intern training programs through to 2025 and 2026 respectively. This accreditation is conducted by the Canberra Region Medical Education Council, a ministerial management council that provides expertise on education, training and welfare for junior medical doctors.
CHS has continued to implement a range of initiatives to support the medical workforce and more specifically the junior medical workforce. There has been a focus on understanding, at the organisational level, the additional staff that are required within our health workforce to ensure relief structures are in place to support the health workforce to take a break and to take their leave. This has commenced, particularly for the junior medical workforce, with the number of basic physician trainees in the relief pool increased by three full-time equivalent staff to support access to leave. This has had a significant impact, with over 80 per cent of physician trainees at Canberra Hospital reporting no difficulties accessing annual or study leave when surveyed in August 2022.
Workplace safety has been a core reform the ACT government has continued to address across the ACT public health system, and we have continued to invest in strengthening those reforms. Through the internationally renowned Speaking Up for Safety program we have introduced the organisation-wide safety code to equip our health workforce with the tools to speak up about any safety concerns. This has been implemented across both CHS and Calvary Public Hospital Bruce, and the evidence shows that a continued message that it is okay to speak up does empower the health workforce to ask questions and raise concerns. We know that these programs are resulting in significant improvement among junior doctors in the ACT knowing how to raise concerns about bullying, harassment and discrimination in the 2021 medical training survey.
The next stage of this work is the implementation of the Promoting Professional Accountability program, which is the next phase of the Speaking Up for Safety initiative to continue to address culture improvement. As part of ongoing work to improve the safety of our workplaces, a number of initiatives have been progressed, including comprehensive work health and safety programs across our organisations and the occupational violence strategy developed by CHS and Calvary Public Hospital Bruce.
Making sure our staff are physically and mentally safe is of paramount importance, and these programs seek to effectively address psychosocial hazards. In the 2022-23 ACT budget we have invested more than $7.2 million to embed a positive safety culture in the ACT public health system, which triples our investment in the Nurses and Midwives: Towards a Safer Culture strategy—the TASC strategy—and expands
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