SPEAK Project on the move
The SPEAK Project is aiming to increase staff capability, improve hospital systems and processes, and improve healthcare experiences for people with disability. Some of our focus of work are:
Disability Liaison Officer (DLO) service in The Alfred Emergency & Trauma Centre (E&TC)
The service operates 7 days a week from 8:30am to 4:30pm with on-call after hours. The DLO may support E&TC staff and patients with:
- Outlining a person's disability supports such as - communication needs, sensory needs, personal care, and mobility needs and helping staff to implement the strategies in ED
- Communication supports - when it may fail, comes to a halt, or won't begin verbally
- Improving hearing capabilities of patients with hearing loss to assist communication
- Gaining behaviour support and care plans from Supported Disability Accommodation services
- De-escalating heightened behaviours to reduce stress for patient and reduce code greys
- Sensory support for patients
- Psychosocial support
- Discharge planning - ensuring the patient knows what is happening next
Staff training on disability
We are developing an online module for all hospital staff. The key areas of focus are:
- Rights of people with disabilities
- Models of disability
- The hospital experience for people with disabilities
- Reasonable Adjustments
- Resources and support staff can access
We are also developing a face-to-face training session to complement the online module for clinical staff who provide inpatient and outpatient services.
Better ways to give feedback
We have identified access barriers and reviewed current feedback processes at the hospital. We are designing and testing feedback systems with the Patient Experience and Consumer Engagement team and consumers to make feedback processes more accessible.
Data Systems
We are working to improve:
- Early identification of patients with disability and/or support needs in the Emergency and Trauma Centre (E&TC)
- Adding a disablity alert to patient's electronic medical records
- Recording information about patient's disability and/or support needs in their electronic medical records
Evaluation
As we trial different activities within the overall SPEAK Project, we continue to evaluate whether they work or not. We are using patient, support person and staff surveys & interviews, and looking at our hospital data to evaluate the success of the SPEAK Project.