Creating a culture that empowers and enables improvement in a regional chemotherapy day unit.

Abstract

Presentation title: Creating a culture that empowers and enables improvement in a regional chemotherapy day unit. Poster Summary: This work was undertaken at the Chemotherapy Day Unit of Ballarat Health Services in Victoria, Australia by a team comprised of the redesign lead, nursing, and clerical staff. Surveys of staff and patients reflected the need to improve the ‘culture’ of the unit. The opportunity for addressing an empowered culture was highlighted as the Unit was preparing to relocate into a new building. The intervention was comprised of complete team sessions led by redesign, including creating a personal and unit legacy, above the line behaviours and basic skills needed for addressing improvement. The initial session occurred over a 4-hour team meeting and ongoing training was held during weekly team meetings. The initial session asked staff to list above the line behaviours they valued in a positive work environment. These were compiled in a ‘word cloud’ to highlight the six most common. Further sessions discussed actions and behaviours that exemplified those six and culminated in developing a legacy statement that all staff agreed to. Follow-up surveys of patients will ask them to rate their experience against the legacy statement. Education around improvement methodology was provided and used to address issues over the initial six months. This process of empowering and enabling staff in a culture of improvement has improved staff morale, as seen in a reduction in sick-leave, as well as, been measured by qualitative data from consumers regarding their ‘relaxed’ experience. This process is currently being used in several other units and is deployable across organisations.