Dissemination strategy
Page contents: Overview | Objectives | Strategy - Dissemination methods | Information specific for Aged Care Facilities | Information specific for Multi-cultural communication
Overview
The Public Hospital Patient Charter (the Charter) provides an avenue to promote the messages to patients, clinicians, medical and other hospital staff of patients' rights and responsibilities. The Charter provides an opportunity to promote a set of clear principles about what consumers should reasonably expect from public hospitals.
The Charter should be part of a broader consumer information policy that provides consumers with access to good and timely information about their health care and treatment options. The Dissemination Strategy will provide ideas and examples of how your hospital can most effectively disseminate the Charter in a localised manner.
Most public hospitals already have their own rights and responsibilities materials available to their patients. The Charter will take the form of a state-wide set of principles, that sets minimum expectations of what consumers can expect when they enter a public hospital across Victoria. Hospitals may prefer to promote their own localised principles and/or incorporate the Charter principles into their own information materials.
As part of the Dissemination Strategy the Department will provide guidance and support to effectively disseminate the principles and ideas of the Charter and the materials that will assist in promoting the principles. It is also important that the principles of the Charter are not only promoted and displayed in hospitals but also accessible and available in the general community through general practice surgeries, community centres, local councils and many other dissemination points.
Objectives
- Position the Charter within Victorian public hospitals as part of a package of initiatives that work towards improving quality in public hospitals.
- Provide hospitals with information on suggested methods to communicate and disseminate the principles of the Charter to patients.
Strategy - Dissemination methods
Hospital Implementation
For the Patient Charter and the hospital localised rights and responsibilities to be effective and successful a whole of hospital approach needs to be considered and undertaken. Hospital's are encouraged to adapt the principles into locally based materials and activities, for several reasons:
- Promotes local ownership of the messages underpinning the Charter
- Enables specific attention to be paid to particular local issues
Different approaches can be used by hospitals depending on hospital priorities, examples include:
- Incorporate into hospital documentation, for example policies, mission statement, objectives, strategic plan;
- Hospital's could review their organisational policies to ensure current information is provided to patients about their rights and responsibilities at first contact and throughout their episode of care
- Present to Community Advisory Committee for appropriate dissemination strategy specific to the hospital
- Identify patients' rights and responsibilities as a priority issue, by engaging senior management and hospital board involvement;
- Incorporate the Charter principles into the Hospital's Code of Ethics
- Inclusion of principles on the hospital website
- Set up links between the hospital and DHS website for the Charter.
Dissemination within the Hospital
Appropriate dissemination of promotional materials is essential to promote the key messages of the Charter. Dissemination to patients can be more than just a brochure on a table in the waiting area or sitting in a brochure holder. Active communication should involve more interactive dissemination channels between the hospital and patient. Some effective ways include:
- Provide information on tapes in English for those patients who are visually impaired.
- Provide information on tapes in other languages
- Information on tapes may not only be exclusive to the Patient Charter but may include other issues relevant to patients.
- Provide information to other key contacts within the hospital eg, social workers, district nurse and local bush nursing hospitals
The materials should also be accessible to patients in as many useful and productive ways as possible, these may include:
- Materials provided to inpatients via:
- Information available at the front desk
- Included in the Patient information package
- Include the principles on the inside of every information package.
- Give directly to patients
- Present in brochure holders on tables
- Poster displayed on walls, in every ward, waiting room and hospital corridors
- Poster displayed on the walls in clinician rooms
- Information available at the patients bedside (the patient maybe more relaxed and willing to read the information provided while lying in bed)
- May prefer to provide the information package to families or carer (as the patient may not be in a condition to take in all the information)
- Materials available to outpatients via:
- Materials available in waiting areas
- Poster displayed on walls
- Materials should be visual to patients
- Materials available to elective patients via:
- Materials included in the information package sent to patients
- Include the principles on the inside of every information package.
- Information available at the patients bedside
- Involving local/speciality hospital wards,
- Each ward to determine how best to disseminate materials depending on specific needs and requirements of patients, for example the aged and mental health areas may have different strategies
- Ensure materials are present, visual, displayed and handed out on each ward, therefore the ward takes the responsibility for this.
- Ward clerks ensure that each patient has either seen or viewed the materials.
- Hospitals have two options in presenting the materials;
- Present the hospital based information and state-wide principles next to each other eg, on the same board (patients can visually associate the two together) or;
- Hospitals displaying the two principles separately (to avoid confusion)
Hospital staff Involvement
It is important to engage all hospital personnel including; senior management, boards and committees, clinicians, medical staff, allied health professionals and other hospital staff. This will ensure a whole of hospital approach. Hospitals will need to identify the extent of hospital engagement. Ways to engage hospital staff involvement and increase awareness of the Charter include:
- Develop a staff information sheet about the Charter for all staff. This aims to promote an advocated partnership approach to delivery of healthcare services
- Staff that have 'direct patient' contact should receive awareness training
- Education sessions with hospital staff
- sessions should be targeted to clinicians, nurses and allied health staff, and also other hospital staff that have contact with the patients.
- Education sessions may focus on the following areas:
- The principles
- Expected Outcomes
- Reasons for the Charter
- Detail the hospitals policies regarding the Charter
- Implications for staff
- Advise on how the state-wide principles and the local hospital based principles can work together
- Education sessions to hospital staff on interpreter usage, availability and appropriateness (refer to Multi-cultural Communication)
- Incorporate hospital chaplains in the education process
- Position Charter poster and other materials in areas where ward/multidisciplinary team meet and gather.
Consumer Involvement
A key aim of the Strategy is to convey the principles of the Charter to consumers, eg hospital patients. As already discussed there are many ways of promoting the Charter.
However, promoting an effective Charter also involves engaging consumers prior to them attending hospital through community relations. Suggested ways to promote the Charter to the community include:
- Hospitals identifying the level at which the Charter will be prioritised and promoted.
- It is important that hospitals identify the demographics of their local community eg, age, culturally and linguistically diverse communities, gender and other characteristics specific to their local community
- Send the promotional materials to local organisations. This will promote the Charter to consumers prior to entering the hospital. Agencies may include:
- Hostels, nursing homes, community centres
Hospitals should determine at what level they will engage agencies. This may involve identifying the specific purpose of consumer and community involvement and deciding how extensive the involvement will be, for example;
- Should consumers be included on working groups
- Strategies for consumer involvement
Information specific for Aged Care Facilities
- Admitting nurse provides written information and also discusses with each patient their rights and responsibilities
- Provide information to families and carers
- When re-printing the Charter information from website print larger copies specific for the elderly
Information specific for Multi-cultural communication
- Produce tapes for patients
- Give to patients upon admission following initial discussions regarding their requirements eg, English not their preferred language
- Develop and encourage staff to have good listening skills, as information may need to be repeated several times especially if the patient is stressed about entering the hospital
- This strategy may not always appear to be cost effective and appropriate but maybe in certain instances
- Included as part of Information Pack
- Upon admission and when each patient is handed the package the ward clerk should ascertain if information is required in another language.
- The Fact Sheet (in 16 community languages) could then be provided in the relevant language to the patient.
- Committed resources to trans cultural co-ordinating
- Education sessions to hospital staff on interpreter awareness, usage, availability and appropriateness
- Poster or sign in hospital foyer/entrance-highlighting that they have a right to an interpreter
- Determine the need of translations of all available brochures into other languages
- Keep and update statistics on the demographics of the local community and keep a profile of multicultural communities.
- Develop special support linkage programs
- Provide a list of bilingual services and a list of all relevant Ethnic Community Centres
- Ethnic Health Workers or Multicultural Advisers who work in general hospitals include in their duty statement to attend regular visits of non-English speaking background inpatients
- Objective is to identify patient's needs and link them with the appropriate support services in order to improve and maximise patient and family care
- Refer to website for further information on specifically targeting the 16 communities identified.