KGH This Year - 2015-16

<p>People let us know they were having a hard time finding their way around KGH so we installed an all new wayfinding system. It uses symbols, bright colours and fewer building names to ensure patients, families and visitors can quickly orient themselves and find their way through our many buildings and hallways to get where they need to go.</p>

<p>Communication between our patients, families and care teams is key to a positive experience and this is where our new Patient and Family Guidebook comes in. It features discussion tools and special spaces where people can write down their questions and answers to help them keep track of information and to foster important conversations with members of their care team.</p>

<p>People want to know what their care journey to, through, and from KGH is going to be like. This year we were proud to relaunch our corporate website to help them navigate their experience. It was designed with the help of our patients, families and staff in all areas and has Patient- and Family-Centred Care written all over it.</p>

<p>For many patients, their bed is the most important piece of hospital equipment.&nbsp; It needs to be comfortable and safe as they may spend a lot of time recovering in it. With the help of the KGH Auxiliary and the UHKF Staff Lottery, we purchased over 400 new hi-low beds that feature the latest comfort and safety technologies for patients and staff, including special covers to prevent the breakdown of skin and painful skin ulcers.</p>

<p>The Emergency Department is another place where patient comfort is important. In one of our Patient Feedback Forums, a former patient suggested lounge chairs would make a big difference during their wait time. Thanks to funding from the University Hospital Kingston Foundation we were able to purchase six specialty chairs that recline for comfort while also&nbsp; freeing up beds for more seriously ill patients in the ED.</p>

<p>Smoking is a leading cause of cancer and our community let us know they wanted KGH to go smoke free to support everyone&rsquo;s health. After plenty of preparations, we were able to remove our temporary smoking shelters and also stepped up our smoking cessation support programs for both patients and staff and we&rsquo;re now fully smoke free.</p>

<p>They may not be a fancy piece of medical equipment, but the new compassion carts in our Intensive Care Unit are making a big difference for families of critically ill patients. Each cart is stocked with drinks, snacks and other supplies so family members can stay close by the bedside of a loved one who is near the end of life.</p>

<p>When patients arrive at our hospital, they may speak a language other than English or French. This is where our new phone-in translation service comes in. The Language Line provides service in over 200 languages to help patients communicate with their care teams. We&rsquo;re also now able to ensure services are quickly available for the hearing impaired.</p>

<p>There is no doubt, a friendly and happy environment can play a role in helping people heal and cope with an illness. With the help of local artists we have been adding art to walls around the hospital and even to our ceilings in the pediatrics unit for both patients and visitors to enjoy.</p>

<p>One of our most prominent art displays has been set up in our busy Kidd 1 hallway. Artists are invited on a rotating basis to put together a show of their work for a month or two with a portion any sales flowing back to KGH.</p>

<p>When a specimen is taken from a patient, they are counting on us to test it quickly and accurately to support their diagnosis and treatment. Over the past year we have made dramatic improvements in ensuring all samples are labelled and stored correctly, reducing the number of errors from hundreds each quarter down to 63 in Q4. Our success in this area has our peer hospitals reaching out to learn how we achieved this dramatic improvement.</p>

<p>Our patients can spend a lot of time in a hospital bed where they can quickly develop a painful skin ulcer. Along with our new beds and their skin protecting covers, this year we launched new education for front-line care providers on skin ulcers and created &lsquo;skin champions&rsquo; on each unit to be advocates and experts on proper skin care for patients.</p>

<p>Patient falls are a constant challenge in hospitals. This year we stepped up our work to improve the consistency with which fall risk assessments, mobility plans and risk reduction strategies are completed for patients. This early identification and planning is helping reduce the chances for patient falls to occur.</p>

<p>Preventing C. <em>difficile</em> infections requires constant vigilance. At the end of this fiscal year, we&rsquo;re proud to report we haven&rsquo;t had an outbreak in almost four years. This is a reflection of our focus on enhanced cleaning, surveillance on units, antibiotic stewardship and contact precautions for any incident that could potentially lead to the spread of infection. We also work with our microbiology laboratory to generate daily reports on specimen results, allowing us to intervene in potential cases of infection as quickly as possible.</p>

<p>Finding out what medications patients have been taking before they arrive at KGH helps ensure the safe and effective prescription of medication.&nbsp; We are working to ensure all patients have a best possible medication history (BPMH) completed by raising awareness with staff and physicians and by embedding medication reconciliation into admission order sets so it becomes part of our standard process.</p>

<p>Care teams are careful when prescribing and delivering medications to patients, but mistakes can and do happen. Over the last several years, we installed automated drug cabinets to control access to medications and this year, we worked to reduce the number of incidents associated with the use of morphine and hydromorphone. The two drugs can easily be confused so this year we implemented a high-alert medication list and more safeguards for controlled drugs. We also launched a nursing education program to help nurses select and administer high-alert medications.</p>

<p>The easiest way to prevent the spread of infection in a hospital is for care providers, families and visitors to wash their hands. &nbsp;Over the last three quarters, we have sustained performance around 88 per cent and our hand hygiene working group continues to identify new initiatives to improve performance such as staff education, posting of compliance rates on units and just-in-time intervention by auditors when they observe missed opportunities for hand washing.</p>

<p>The Surgical Safety Checklist was put in place to improve safety before, during, and after any surgical procedure. We monitor its use to make sure that all three phases of the checklist are being completed for every surgery that takes place in our hospital. Next we will focus on implementing the checklist in other high-risk procedure areas of the hospital.</p>

<p>Fostering the smooth timely flow of patients to, within and from KGH is a constant challenge in all hospitals and we&rsquo;re working hard to reduce emergency department and clinical service wait times, the number of patients waiting in KGH to receive care in a more appropriate setting and our overall occupancy rate. This year, we implemented a &lsquo;Getting out of Gridlock&rsquo; initiative where interprofessional teams meet twice daily with the sole purpose of solving problems and improving processes to help&nbsp; us ensure timely access to our acute care services.</p>

<p>Work is well underway to transform Connell 4 into the new William J. Henderson Centre for Patient-Oriented Research. The centre will position us well to translate research into practice, increase public and private sector partnerships, develop new intellectual property, and translate knowledge that can influence the standard of care delivered in our region and beyond. The project is expected to go to tender later this year.</p>

<p>The KGH Research Institute launched a website this year. It&rsquo;s a powerful new tool that will help us build our national and international profile and help us attract top talent. It will also help our current researchers connect with industry, their peers around the world, new patients and each other.</p>

<p>KGH researcher Dr. Stephen Vanner is helping lead the largest- ever study group of gastrointestinal disease in Canadian history. The $12.5 million study is being funded by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research and Dr. Vanner will lead the portion of the study focusing on improving the lives of people suffering from Irritable Bowel Syndrome.</p>

<p>Novel research at KGH targeting C. <em>difficile</em> was awarded major funding from the U.S. National Institutes of Health. The funding of up to $1.2 million will enable a multi-institutional team led by Dr. Elaine Petrof, a clinician-researcher at the KGHRI, to further develop &ldquo;RePoopulate.&rdquo; It is&nbsp;a synthetically derived alternative to fecal transplants that can be used to treat recurrent C. <em>difficile</em> infection.&nbsp;&nbsp;Early trials with a small number of patients at KGH have shown it to be highly effective in curing the hard-to-treat, sometimes&nbsp;fatal, disease.</p>

<p>Chronic pain is a condition that causes profound suffering for millions of people. This year, KGHRI clinician scientist Ian Gilron received funding to co-lead a new research network focused on identifying new treatments to manage and prevent chronic pain. The Chronic Pain Network is being funded by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research and it will conduct laboratory and clinical research studies on chronic pain. As part of this work it will also examine the impact of sex, gender, and ethnic differences on chronic pain.</p>

<p>As our region&rsquo;s largest research and teaching hospital, KGH is a proud member of the Council of Academic Hospitals of Ontario (CAHO). This year, we have been busy putting the spotlight on all of the research happening at the KGHRI as part of CAHO&rsquo;s campaign to let everyone know that investing in health research helps create a Healthier, Wealthier and Smarter Ontario. This included a tour of all three hospitals in Kingston and Queen&#39;s University that took place entirely over Twitter using the hashtag <a href="https://twitter.com/search?f=tweets&amp;vertical=default&amp;q=%23onHWS…;

<p>To help build engagement action plans at both the corporate and team levels, KGH held our second Employee and Physician Engagement Surveys this year. Over 65 per cent of employees and 37 per cent of physicians took part, beating our targets. At the corporate level, the results showed our engagement levels have held steady since our previous survey in 2013. They will next be broken down and shared at the team level to allow people to work on the things that matter the most to them in their own areas.</p>

<p>To help build engagement, employees have said they would appreciate more educational and learning opportunities. This is where ongoing events such as our Knowledge Exchanges come in. They are held regularly and everyone is invited to come out and hear the latest on such topics as health literacy for patients, new accreditation standards and leadership development. We also encouraged staff to take part in conferences and to use some cutting-edge online learning tools.</p>

<p>Our popular KGH Team Awards are handed out during the KGH Community Showcase each year. This year, the spotlight was on a record of 16 nominated teams in the categories of Care, Knowledge and Leadership. The winners were recognized out for their work to develop a new way to care for babies born to mothers on opioids, redesigning the way palliative care is delivered at KGH, and for fully implementing powerful new software in our Emergency Department.</p>

<p>To help staff stay on top of their careers, schedules and pay we launched two big pieces of technology this year. About 80 per cent of hospital staff are now using the Staff Scheduling and Time Capture system to track their time, book their vacations and switch shifts. Meanwhile, The Career Hub portal now allows people inside and outside of the organization to easily find and apply for KGH jobs online.</p>

<p>Performance conversations are one of the best ways to help build employee engagement, growth and development. Over a two-year period, we have completed over 3,000 employee performance agreements. We also launched a new training program called LIFT to help formal and emerging leaders find ways to reach their full potential.</p>

<p>Staff recognition takes many forms and one of our most popular events is our annual Strawberry Social where everyone is invited to come for berries, cake and conversation.&nbsp; Hundreds of staff and their families also came out for some winter time fun this year at a Kingston Frontenacs&rsquo; hockey game and post-game skate on Family Day.</p>

<p>Along with staff engagement, staff health and safety is a top priority. Over the past year we carried out audits and trained staff to use new equipment to help prevent musculoskeletal injuries that often occur while helping a patient to move. As an example, staff on two of floors are now using new transfer poles that were installed to help patients transition in and out of bed.</p>

<p>Workplace violence is an issue at hospitals across the province. Here at KGH we have put new procedures in place to ensure patients at risk of aggressive or violent behavior are identified early and placed on a Behavioural Crisis Alert. This will allow care teams to anticipate and respond to the needs of these patients better and to plan the patient&rsquo;s care accordingly. When violence does occur we have debriefs that include physicians to assist with care plans and help promote safety for both staff and patients.</p>

<p>A Magnetic Resonance Imaging machine is one of the most technologically advanced pieces of equipment in the hospital and thanks to generous donations to the UHKF from our community, a second machine is on the way. A $3 million donation from Homestead Land Holdings pushed the $6 million fundraising campaign over the top much sooner than expected.</p>

<p>In another major investment, this year we began the installation of a cutting-edge Automated Chemistry Track in our Clinical Laboratories. The track was assembled and shipped to KGH from Italy. It carries out tests on patient samples quickly and accurately to support timely decisions about diagnosis, admission and discharge. This new track is expected to be fully implemented at the beginning of our next fiscal year.</p>

<p>Microscopes play a vital role in modern medicine and the new multi-head microscope in our clinical labs will provide clearer images and faster results than ever for cancer patients. It was purchased with a $60,000 donation to the UHKF from our partner the Kingston Community Credit Union.</p>

<p>For the past six years, we have been stepping up our efforts to keep our hospital as clean as possible and in a recent independent audit of our cleaning performance we surpassed the industry benchmark of 85 per cent for the first time.</p>

<p>Our Emergency Department is one of the busiest in the region and this year we invested in needed repairs to the ramp leading up to it. As part of this complex project we worked with our many regional partners and safely relocated our ED entrance to the Armstrong wing for a month while the asphalt and new snow melting equipment was installed.</p>

<p>Patients and care teams are looking forward to the day when everyone has an electronic patient record that can be viewed by care teams at every stop. This year, KGH helped bring this a step closer to reality when we lead a successful pilot project to make provincial lab results available to clinicians using a new clinical viewer inside our hospital.</p>

<p>Safe and modern facilities are an essential ingredient for us to deliver complex-acute and specialty care. This year, we focused on creating detailed plans and the fundraising needed for the provincial government&rsquo;s consideration of our Phase 2 redevelopment project. If it goes ahead as planned, the project will feature new operating rooms, labour and delivery rooms, a neonatal intensive care unit, clinical laboratories and new emergency care facilities.</p>

<p>As a first step in planning our future, we paused to review and reaffirm our existing KGH Strategy. It was first developed in 2010 after we consulted with our stakeholders and over 2,000 people in the community. Now, six years later we remain committed to our aim of delivering Outstanding Care, Always, our mission and guiding principles.</p>

<p>To kick off our planning process, we gathered our entire leadership team, along with Patient Experience Advisors, to learn about the forces of change in our environment, envision to the future of KGH and consider how our strategic directions need to evolve to keep moving us closer to our aim of Outstanding Care, Always.</p>

<p>We worked closely with our Board of Directors to make sure we are responding well to the forces of change, heading in the right direction and readying our organization for the transformation that is taking place in Ontario&rsquo;s health-care system.</p>

<p>We also consulted with hundreds of people who work, learn and volunteers at our hospital in more than 60 Team Talks to gather as much feedback as possible on our new strategic directions and how we can bring them to life.</p>

<p>We heard loud and clear from all our stakeholders that the time was right for us refresh our strategic directions while staying true to our aim of Outstanding Care, Always. As a result, we now have six refreshed strategic directions and enablers to focus our activities over the next two years.</p>

<p>One of our new strategic directions highlights the importance of our work to help create a high-performing regional health-care system with our partners. This work is already well underway with our participation in the Health Care Tomorrow &ndash; Hospital Services initiative that will see us help create a regional system of integrated care that is financially sustainable.</p>

<p>Along with our continued commitment to transforming the patient and family experience in our hospital, we are putting more of a spotlight on supporting the people who work at KGH by transforming the workplace experience through a focus on work-life quality. Much of this work will flow out of what we are learning from our employee and physician engagement surveys.</p>