Development and Evaluation of a Massive Open Online Course on Healthcare Redesign: A Novel Method for Engaging Healthcare Workers in Quality Improvement.

Healthcare workers are under increasing pressure to use limited resources more efficiently and improve patient outcomes. Healthcare redesign, a quality improvement methodology derived from the automotive industry, is a proven means of achieving these goals. Continuing Professional Development (CPD) opportunities for nurses seeking to build their capacity for healthcare redesign often come in the form of university courses, which can be costly and prohibitively time-consuming.

Delivering a work-integrated learning postgraduate course during COVID-19: Experiences, challenges and strategies.

COVID-19 has had a significant impact on teaching and learning in postgraduate education. In particular, work integrated learning, in health care settings, has been disrupted in many ways negatively impacting student learning. Our Clinical Redesign courses are designed to deliver work-integrated learning in partnership with healthcare organisations to deliver workplace projects in real time, which has been complicated by COVID-19.

Whiteboards and discharge traffic lights: visual management in acute care.

Flinders Medical Centre was experiencing issues with timely discharge and knowing the potential discharges and in-patient bed capacity for the next day. This case study describes the application of 'visual management' theory to discharge processes. The solutions developed were 'patient journey boards' and 'discharge traffic lights'.

Electronic patient journey boards a vital piece of the puzzle in patient flow.

Objective: Internationally, there is growing interest in the applicability of visual management in healthcare, although little is known about the extent of its effectiveness. In the past 5 years technical advances have permitted the integration of all relevant data into a singular display that can improve staff efficiency, accelerate decisions, streamline workflow processes and reduce oversights and errors in clinical practice. The aim of the case study is to describe the features and application of electronic patient journey boards (EPJBs) as an enabler to accelerate patient flow that has been demonstrated and evaluated in Queensland Health hospitals.

Outcomes of establishing an acute assessment unit in the general medical service of a tertiary teaching hospital.

Objective: To evaluate the impact of an acute assessment unit (AAU) on length of hospital stay (LOS), emergency department (ED) waiting times, direct discharge rate, unplanned readmission rate and all-cause hospital mortality of general medical patients.

Design And Setting: Retrospective comparison of data for general medical patients admitted to a tertiary teaching hospital in Adelaide, South Australia, before and after the establishment of an AAU (reference years, 2003 [before] and 2006 [after]).

Main Outcome Measures: Mean LOS, ED waiting times and all-cause hospital mortality during calendar years 2003 (pre-establishment) and 2006 (post-establishment).

Misoprostol for second and third trimester termination of pregnancy: a review of practice at the Women's and Children's Hospital, Adelaide, Australia.

Aims: To assess clinical outcomes for women undergoing induction of labour either for fetal anomaly or following intrauterine fetal death using intravaginal misoprostol.

Methods: Between January 1999 and December 2002, clinical outcomes for women who were admitted to the delivery suite of the Women's and Children's Hospital, South Australia, were prospectively collected and entered onto a database by the attending midwife. The effect of cumulative dose of misoprostol, indication for induction of labour, parity and gestational age were assessed.