Primary Care Impact

Increase patient and staff safety during COVID-19

This is a More Involved QI – includes free access to Medicoach

COVID-19 has meant major adjustments to routine activities in general practice. This activity focuses on the ability to increase patient and staff safety by implementing COVID-19 infection control and social distancing guidelines.

With the community transmission on the rise in Victoria and Sydney, improvement ideas could focus on preparing your practice for future outbreaks or a second wave, should this unfortunately emerge on the North Coast. See below for examples from North Coast general practices:

Video (see below) from AB Surgery in Kempsey where Practice Manager Melissa Chapman talks through their experience and lessons for the future.
PDSA and photo gallery from Tweed Health for Everyone Superclinic Practice Manager, Alana Flohr (see below in in the Shared PDSA Example(s) section). The PDSA and photo gallery give a comprehensive and practical overview of clinic modifications and demonstrate what can be achieved with committed leadership and proactive staff communication.

Thanks to the teams at AB Surgery and Tweed Health for Everyone Superclinic for your effort and for generously sharing with colleagues!

Click fullscreen video to enlarge

Goal

Increase staff and patient safety by implementing COVID-19 social distancing and infection control guidelines.

Measure

Number of staff completing the Commonwealth COVID-19 infection control training.

Implementation and review of physical alterations to accommodate social distancing guidelines.

Regular safety audits against the RACGP checklist Keeping your Practice COVID Safe demonstrate that practice safety is maintained

Starting point

Review the HealthPathways COVID-19 Practice Management page.
Review the RACGP Infection Prevention and Standards 5th edition and download the RACGP Checklist Keeping your Practice COVID Safe
Download the NSW Health Infection Prevention and Control Novel Coronavirus 2019 (2019-nCoV) – Primary and Community Care resource.
Download a Department of Health fact sheet on environmental cleaning and disinfection principles for COVID-19.
Download the GPSA Pandemic Response Coronavirus Infection Control Resource Kit. The kit sets out useful examples of common workflows in general practice, including the roles and responsibilities for each team member to control for infection in day-to-day situations during the pandemic.
Log in to the Australian Government’s COVID-19 infection control online training. The training takes approximately 30 minutes.
See video from AB Surgery Kempsey (above) where Practice Manager Melissa Chapman discusses their experience with: patient screening, team work, HR, and flu clinics
Brainstorm ways to keep staff and patients safe.

Possible improvement ideas

Prepare for COVID-19 outbreaks.
- Review practice safety as a team and audit for areas that need attention by filling out the RACGP Checklist Keeping your Practice COVID Safe in conjunction with the RACGP Infection Prevention and Standards 5th edition.
- Set a review date for regular audits to check you are maintaining safety at your practice.
- See video from AB Surgery Kempsey (above) where Practice Manager Melissa Chapman talks through improvement ideas such as: setting up remote logins for clinicians, ensuring plentiful supply of hand sanitiser and PPE and rostering A and B teams to ensure business continuity should a staff member test positive to COVID-19.
- See PDSA from Tweed Health for Everyone Superclinic (below) for comprehensive list of improvement ideas to ensure staff and patient safety.
Allocate protected time for staff to do the online infection control training.
Trial physical adjustments to the practice.
Review physical and infection control arrangements at regular ‘COVID-19 staff and patient safety huddles’ (these could be brief weekly 5-10 minute check-ins to ensure things are working) or via suggestions and advice to the person coordinating the response for your practice.