Overview
The National Safety and Quality Health Service (NSQHS) Standards provide a nationally consistent statement of the level of care consumers can expect from health service organisations.
The primary aims of the NSQHS Standards are:
- to protect the public from harm
- to improve the quality of health service provision.
The 8 NSQHS standards
Standard 1: Clinical governance standard
Leaders of a health service organisation have a responsibility to the community for continuous improvement of the safety and quality of their services, and ensuring that they are patient centred, safe and effective.
Courses:
This course covers how to handle complaints better and help stop complaints escalating in your organisation.
Audience: Queensland Health
This course will increase your confidence to deal with difficult client behaviour when delivering services to the public. You will also learn strategies to prevent and manage unreasonable conduct and promote best practice customer service.
Audience: Queensland Health
Standard 2: Partnering with consumers standard
Leaders of a health service organisation develop, implement and maintain systems to partner with consumers. These partnerships relate to the planning, design, delivery, measurement and evaluation of care. The workforce uses these systems to partner with consumers.
Guides and tools:
This framework has been developed collaboratively by Metro North Health staff and consumers to provide guidance to creating better healthcare together through co-design.
Audience: Queensland Health
Australian Charter of Healthcare Rights: The Australian Commission on Safety and Quality in Health Care developed the Australian Charter of Healthcare Rights, which describes the rights that consumers, or someone they care for, can expect when receiving health care.
Audience: Queensland Health
A welcoming environment in a health service organisation is about creating a place where Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people feel safe, comfortable, accepted, and confident that they will be respected, will be listened to and will receive high-quality care.
Audience: Queensland Health
Resources on partnering with consumers.
Audience: Queensland Health
A fact sheet for quality managers about improving health literacy.
Audience: Queensland Health
A guide for health staff: Partnering with consumers is written to help health staff develop effective consumer partnerships and complements our companion consumer and community engagement framework.
Audience: Queensland Health
The purpose of this toolkit is to provide practical solutions and tips to support staff in the task of accessing a broad and diverse range of consumer voices and conducting consultation activities in a sensitive, ethical and inclusive manner.
Audience: Queensland Health
Standard 3: Preventing and controlling infections standard
Leaders of a health service organisation develop, implement and monitor systems to prevent, manage and control infections and antimicrobial resistance; reduce harm for patients, consumers and members of the workforce; and achieve good health outcomes for patients. The workforce uses these systems to minimise and manage risks to patients and consumers.
Courses:
This online course covers the essentials for infection control awareness to promote a safe environment for workplace and staff.
Audience: Metro North Health
Enrol via CSDS
CSDS Fit testing program
Fit Testing is a valid method to determine if a specific brand, model and size respirator obtains a proper fit or seal to a person’s face. This fit testing program provides participants with fundamental knowledge and skills to perform quantitative fit testing in healthcare settings. At the completion of this program, the participant is qualified to undertake quantitative fit testing. For enquiries please contact: MNHHSFitTestingProgram@health.qld.gov.au
Audience: Metro North Health
Standard 4: Medication safety standard
Leaders of a health service organisation describe, implement and monitor systems to reduce the occurrence of medication incidents, and improve the safety and quality of medicines use. The workforce uses these systems.
Courses:
This elearning course has been developed by the Queensland Statewide Antimicrobial Program to gain a greater understanding of the role of vancomycin in treating infections. The course is suitable for nurses, pharmacists and doctors.
Audience: Queensland Health
These courses are for early career health professionals working in acute care and other health professionals with an interest in improving their medication safety knowledge. These modules align with the National Safety and Quality Health Service Standards, and cover an introduction to high risk medicines as well as specific high risk medicine classes including anticoagulants, clozapine, insulin, opioids and psychotropic medicines.
Audience: Queensland Health
This course provides the knowledge and skills to safely administer medication using the six rights for medication safety.
Audience: Queensland Health
This training course will guide you through the principles of safe prescribing and demonstrate how to complete the National Standard Medication Charts correctly.
Audience: Queensland Health
Guides and Tools:
The Orientation to paper prescribing charts page provides videos and links to a range of resources to assist staff to understand how to use a range of paper-based prescribing charts.
Audience: Queensland Health
The Queensland Health state-wide medication safety webpage has a range of guidelines, resources, decision support and fact sheets to promote medication safety.
Audience: Queensland Health
Standard 5: Comprehensive care standard
Leaders of a health service organisation establish and maintain systems and processes to support clinicians to deliver comprehensive care, and establish and maintain systems to prevent and manage specific risks of harm to patients during the delivery of health care. The workforce uses the systems to deliver comprehensive care and manage risk.
Courses:
This instructor led course is 4 and a half hours and is intended for staff who interact with patients. Trauma-Informed Care (TIC) aims to provide the clinicians with a framework to reinforce a person-centred approach and compliment current approaches such as Safewards, recovery and strengths orientated practices and sensory modulation. A TIC service acknowledges the prevalence of trauma, recognises how trauma affects all individuals (consumers and staff) and responds by implementing trauma informed practices. It is underpinned by a comprehensive understanding of the neurological, biological, psychological and social effects of trauma on all those who engage with the service.
Audience: Queensland Health
Trauma-Informed Care (TIC) is an approach to health service delivery that acknowledges current scientific understanding regarding the strong association between psychological trauma and mental and physical illness. Additionally, it acknowledges how trauma impacts the life of individuals engaging with health services, including the health and wellbeing of healthcare staff. This course will show that understanding people by asking “what happened to you?” and “how did you cope?” instead of “what is wrong with you?” will provide services that are more evidence based, effective and strengths focused. This will ultimately improve the quality of life for clients, families and carers and our for our dedicated workforce. This course takes approximately 1 hour.
Audience: Queensland Health
The responsive trauma-informed healthcare e-learning package has been designed for Health Professionals who provide hospital-based interventions to children and their families. It covers the continuum of care for children up to 18 years. The course and the content are designed to progressively enhance your knowledge of responsive trauma-informed care in a healthcare setting. Therefore, it is recommended that you progress through the four modules in sequence.
Audience: Queensland Health
In this module, preventing falls, you’ll examine the impact that falls and fall-related injuries have on our patients, residents, their families and the health care system. By implementing best practice strategies and working with patients and their multidisciplinary teams, we can reduce the risk of patients falling in our care.
Audience: Queensland Health
This elearning module covers aspects including preventing falls and harm from falls, preventing and managing pressure injuries, nutrition and hydration preventing delirium and managing cognitive impairment and end of life.
Audience: Queensland Health
This course is designed to assess your ability to classify pressure injuries and non-surgical wound types for both adult and paediatric patients.
Audience: Queensland Health
This course takes 45 minutes and is a valuable tool to learn and understand about Queensland’s Voluntary Assisted Dying Act 2021, and healthcare staff role and obligations in enabling patient choice to access information about VAD.
Audience: Queensland Health
Guides and Tools:
Queensland Health website on voluntay assisted dying has information for medical practitioners and healthcare workers and includes guides, education and resources.
Audience: Queensland Health
Access the Queensland legislation for Voluntary Assisted Dying.
Audience: Queensland Health
Standard 6: Communicating for safety standard
Leaders of a health service organisation set up and maintain systems and processes to support effective communication with patients, carers and families; between multidisciplinary teams and clinicians; and across health service organisations. The workforce uses these systems to effectively communicate to ensure safety.
Courses:
This online education is designed to help maximise patient safety outcomes by using the Surgical Safety Preoperative Checklists to reinforce evidence-based safety practices and to promote effective communication and teamwork between perioperative team members.
Audience: Queensland Health
Help to ensure safe and clear clinical communication by accessing these Clinical Excellence Queensland resources that include online learning, videos, audit tools and frameworks. Find out more about communicating safely at clinical handover, surgical safety, correct identification and procedure matching, and informed consent.
Audience: Queensland Health
Structured clinical handover has been shown to reduce communication errors within and between health service organisations, and improve patient safety and care, because critical information is more likely to be accurately transferred and acted on. Find resources and videos.
Audience: Queensland Health
Ryan’s Rule is the statewide Patient, Family and Carer Escalation Process that enables HHSs to meet the National Safety and Quality Health Service Standards.
Audience: Queensland Health
Standard 7: Blood management standard
Leaders of a health service organisation describe, implement and monitor systems to ensure the safe, appropriate, efficient and effective care of patients’ own blood, as well as other blood and blood products. The workforce uses the blood product safety systems.
Courses:
Transporting Blood covers the correct procedures of picking up, transporting and storing blood products including checking correct patient and blood component details. It is designed for hospital orderlies, couriers, porters and patient service staff responsible for picking up blood from a blood fridge, blood transfusion service or blood bank.
Audience: Metro North Health staff who transport blood products
The Collecting Blood Specimens course is based on national guidelines and has been developed in collaboration with leading transfusion medicine experts from around Australia. This course: – explains the correct procedures for patient identification, specimen collection and labelling. – is designed for specimen collectors, phlebotomists and venepuncture staff whose main role is collecting pre-transfusion blood samples.
Audience: Metro North Health staff specimen collectors, phlebotomists and venepuncture staff whose main role is collecting pre-transfusion blood samples.
This course aims to help you understand and apply blood management strategies in the care of pregnant woman. Learning objectives: – define the principles and application of blood management for women receiving obstetric care. – explain the reasons for the routine haematology tests that are recommended during pregnancy. – state how to assess, investigate and manage iron deficiency and/or anaemia in pregnant women. – recognise pregnant women who are at increased risk of bleeding and assess and manage these risks. – discuss expert consensus guidelines for the use of blood products for pregnant women and apply these to clinical practice.
Audience: Metro North Health staff maternity clinical staff
Patient Blood Management (PBM) is individualised and evidence based care that aims to limit a patient’s exposure to blood products and thereby improve patient outcomes. It is not limited to one clinical specialty or discipline. It improves clinical outcomes for all patients who may be at risk of receiving a blood transfusion. Therefore, staff working with medical, surgical, critical care, obstetric and paediatric patients will benefit from this eLearning course.
Audience: Metro North Health clinical staff
This course aims to promote safe transfusion practice and the appropriate use of blood components. – is relevant for medical staff who prescribe transfusions, nurses and midwives who administer the transfusion and laboratory workers who want to gain an appreciation of the clinical aspects of blood transfusion.
Audience: Metro North Healthmedical staff who prescribe transfusions, nurses and midwives who administer the transfusion and laboratory workers
Guides and Tools:
Provides oversite, governance, guidelines and resources for Australia’s national blood and blood products supply and usage and reporting. Access to BloodSTAR immunoglobulin national ordering portal and training and resources.
Audience: Queensland Health
Provides information on blood and blood products, donor and testing information, latest news and updates and clinical practice tools, audits and education opportunities for health professionals.
Audience: Queensland Health
Access to research, guidelines and standards in key areas of transfusion practice and collaboration with international societies interested in blood transfusion.
Audience: Queensland Health
Standard 8: Recognising and responding to acute deterioration standard
Leaders of a health service organisation set up and maintain systems for recognising and responding to acute deterioration. The workforce uses the recognition and response systems.
Courses:
This module provides a suite of educational resources from the COMPASS Early Recognition of the Deterioration Patient Program.
Audience: Queensland Health
This is a 30-minute eLearning module that is aimed at improving clinicians’ confidence and competence in the recognition, escalation and treatment of patients with sepsis and septic shock.
Audience: Queensland Health
A 30 minute eLearning module and case study to help clinicians achieve skills and knowledge in dealing with adult sepsis patients during a hospital stay.
Audience: Queensland Health
Guides and Tools:
This advisory describes the minimum requirements for Actions 8.05, 8.06 b, c, d and e and 8.12 that health service organisations must undertake to demonstrate work towards establishing effective processes for recognising and responding to deterioration in a person’s mental state.
Audience: Queensland Health
Access pathways and resources to assist in the recognition and treatment of paediatric sepsis.
Audience: Queensland Health
Other NSQHS resources
Metro North Health, NSQHS Standards Committees – contact information and terms of reference descibing purpose functions and authority.
Audience: Metro North Health
Clinical Excellence Queensland is strongly committed to supporting our health services in achieving and surpassing the National Safety and Quality Health Service (NSQHS) standards. A range of audit tools have been developed for facilities to use to collect data and evidence of meeting the standards.
Audience: Metro North Health
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