HIRAID® now implemented across 6 LHNs in South Australia

We are con­tin­u­ing our part­ner­ship with the Uni­ver­si­ty of Syd­ney and par­tic­i­pat­ing South Aus­tralian Local Health Net­works (LHNs) for a statewide roll­out of HIRAID®.

The Cen­tral Ade­laide Local Health Net­work (CAL­HN) were the first South Aus­tralian LHN to imple­ment HIRAID® ear­li­er this year, led by the local imple­men­ta­tion team of Daniel Sofia (ED Nurse Con­sul­tant), Megan Franken­feld and Dani Mar­shall (ED Nurse Edu­ca­tors). They report that staff have adapt­ed to the change in the nurs­ing assess­ment process well, with the HIRAID® struc­ture pro­vid­ing the frame­work to sup­port com­ple­tion and doc­u­men­ta­tion of a com­pre­hen­sive nurs­ing assess­ment. New staff are report­ing feel­ing con­fi­dent in hav­ing a frame­work to approach assess­ing patients pre­sent­ing to emer­gency departments. 

Fol­low­ing on from the suc­cess­ful imple­men­ta­tion at CAL­HN, five more LHNs are tak­ing this fan­tas­tic oppor­tu­ni­ty to imple­ment this evi­dence-based frame­work that deliv­ers improve­ments in patient and sys­tem out­comes. Plan­ning is well under­way to imple­ment HIRAID at Barossa Hills Fleurieu LHN, North­ern Ade­laide LHN (NAL­HN), South­ern Ade­laide LHN (SAL­HN) and Women’s and Children’s Health Net­work in 2024, with the Eyre and Far North LHN and Lime­stone Coast LHN to fol­low in 2025. 

HIRAID®, which stands for His­to­ry (includ­ing infec­tion risk), Iden­ti­fy Red flags, Assess­ment, Inter­ven­tions and Diag­nos­tics, is the only val­i­dat­ed, evi­dence-based frame­work that empow­ers emer­gency nurs­es to sys­tem­at­i­cal­ly assess and man­age Emer­gency Depart­ment (ED) patients after triage. Devel­oped in New South Wales, HIRAID® has been suc­cess­ful­ly imple­ment­ed in rur­al, region­al and met­ro­pol­i­tan EDs in New South Wales and Victoria.

Research has demon­strat­ed that HIRAID® improves:

• the qual­i­ty of patient assess­ment and documentation
• recog­ni­tion and response to clin­i­cal deterioration
• improved com­mu­ni­ca­tion between nurs­ing and med­ical staff
• nurs­es’ self-effi­ca­cy and lev­els of anxiety.

HIRAID® has been shown to reduce the risk and asso­ci­at­ed costs of clin­i­cal ward dete­ri­o­ra­tion asso­ci­at­ed with ED care dur­ing the first 72 hours of admis­sion in patients admit­ted via the ED.

If you would like to know more the work of our Urgent and Emer­gent Care Statewide Clin­i­cal Net­work and how HIRAID® can be imple­ment­ed in your prac­tice, reach out to us at CEIHUrgentandEmergentCare@​sa.​gov.​au.