Commission on Excellence and Innovation in Health

Improvement and Innovation Showcase Series 11: Strengthening healthcare workplace wellbeing in South Australia

The Improvement and Innovation Showcase brings together teams from across the health system to connect, share and explore their experiences of working towards better healthcare for all South Australians.

Improvement and Innovation Showcase 30: Creating excellence in workplace wellbeing, what does it look like?

Katie Billing, Executive Director, Consumer and Clinical Partnerships, CEIH

Isla Woidt, Manager, Workforce Wellbeing Partnerships, Partnerships Program, CEIH

Since its inception in 2020, the Commission on Excellence and Innovation in Health (CEIH) has recognised that workforce are critical to the effectiveness and sustainability of the healthcare system and, ultimately, patient outcomes. CEIH are committed to ensuring the health system is designed to prioritise, protect and promote the health, safety and wellbeing of the healthcare workforce to enable the delivery of efficient, effective and high-quality patient care.

Katie and Isla share how CEIH has engaged with leaders and analysed data to describe the current state of workplace wellbeing in the SA health sector. Having applied the global evidence base of workforce wellbeing in healthcare to the current state in SA, hear about key opportunities for action in SA plus a range of resources available to assist the SA healthcare sector in strengthening workplace wellbeing. Katie Billing has more than 20 years experience in health care and nursing leadership across acute, emergency and aged care and has led the current strategic focus on workplace wellbeing in SA. Isla Woidt has worked in workplace health and wellbeing for over 15 years and has been involved in the design and delivery of some of SA’s largest workplace wellbeing programs across a range of sectors.

Captions are auto-generated, apologies for any unintended errors.

Improve­ment and Inno­va­tion Show­case 31: Best Prac­tice Guide­lines: Improv­ing the Aged Care Work Health Environment

Nico­la Williams, Pro­fes­sion­al Offi­cer, Aus­tralian Nurs­ing and Mid­wifery Fed­er­a­tion South Aus­tralian Branch

Sheree Wills, WHS & Return to Work Coor­di­na­tor, Tanun­da Luther­an Home 

The Aus­tralian Nurs­ing and Mid­wifery Fed­er­a­tion (SA Branch) have begun a 2‑year project as a part­ner­ship with Return-to-Work SA, to imple­ment a sys­tem­at­ic approach to the reduc­ing health care work­ers injuries in aged care set­tings by cre­at­ing a healthy work environment. 

The project will be imple­ment­ed with­in the Aged Care sec­tor in South Aus­tralia where the indus­try lodges 800 work injury claims each year with annu­al claims costs (exclud­ing seri­ous injury) of $20 million. 

The healthy work envi­ron­ment mod­el will be based on the Reg­is­tered Nurs­es Asso­ci­a­tion of Ontario Best Prac­tice Guide­lines which focus­es on bring­ing the best evi­dence to prac­tice in max­imis­ing the health and well­be­ing of nurs­es and oth­er staff, res­i­dent out­comes and organ­i­sa­tion­al performance. 

The project will empow­er prac­tice cham­pi­ons to embed and facil­i­tate change, cre­ate a sus­tain­able struc­ture to advance evi­dence-based care and achieve mea­sur­able improve­ments in safe­ty and quality. 

Cap­tions are auto-gen­er­at­ed, apolo­gies for any unin­tend­ed errors.

Improve­ment and Inno­va­tion Show­case 32: SA’s Healthy Work­places Strat­e­gy: Employ­ee Well­be­ing and Work Performance

Ms Kylie Cocks, Act­ing Man­ag­er, Healthy Work­places, Well­be­ing SA 

Dr Jo Anne Dumalaon-Canaria, Healthy Work­places Advi­sor, Office of the Com­mis­sion­er for Pub­lic Sec­tor Employment 

Every­one deserves to work in a place where their health and well­be­ing mat­ter. The Healthy Work­places Ser­vice is a key com­po­nent of the state-wide Healthy Work­place Strat­e­gy. This is led by Well­be­ing SA in con­junc­tion with four mem­bers of the Col­lab­o­ra­tive Part­ner­ship for Work­place Health and Well­be­ing name­ly Depart­ment for Indus­try, Inno­va­tion and Sci­ence, Office of the Com­mis­sion­er for Pub­lic Sec­tor Employ­ment, Safe­Work­SA, and Return­ToWork­SA. This strat­e­gy was devel­oped in response to co-designed ini­tia­tives con­duct­ed with South Aus­tralian organ­i­sa­tions for coor­di­nat­ed state-wide action across sys­tem lev­els and sec­tors on work­place health initiatives. 

This pre­sen­ta­tion will pro­vide back­ground infor­ma­tion about the Healthy Work­places Strat­e­gy includ­ing how it was co-designed, inno­v­a­tive strate­gies imple­ment­ed, and out­comes achieved. Lessons and key-take­aways will pro­vide insights on how it can ben­e­fit the South Aus­tralian health­care audience. 

Cap­tions are auto-gen­er­at­ed, apolo­gies for any unin­tend­ed errors.

Improve­ment and Inno­va­tion Show­case 33: Part­ner­ing to Redesign Work and Well­be­ing: Health­care and Social Assistance 

Cati Thomas, Applied Organ­i­sa­tion­al Research Spe­cial­ist & Psy­chol­o­gist, Cen­tre for Trans­for­ma­tive Work Design, Future of Work Institute 

Over 100 years of research tells us that work design (the way our work tasks, activ­i­ties, rela­tion­ships, and respon­si­bil­i­ties are organ­ised) affects a vari­ety of out­comes such as well­be­ing, work stress, job sat­is­fac­tion, absen­teeism, per­for­mance and more. Despite this, the crit­i­cal work­force in the health­care and social assis­tance sec­tor typ­i­cal­ly suf­fers from high lev­els of work-relat­ed burnout and dis­en­gage­ment. Sus­tain­able work redesign inter­ven­tions are need­ed to improve the work and well­be­ing of this workforce. 

Join Cati Thomas, a psy­chol­o­gist and a researcher from the Cen­tre for Trans­for­ma­tive Work Design (CTWD), to hear how the CTWD is part­ner­ing with organ­i­sa­tions in the health­care and social assis­tance to redesign their work and improve their wellbeing.

Cap­tions are auto-gen­er­at­ed, apolo­gies for any unin­tend­ed errors.

Improve­ment and Inno­va­tion Show­case 34: Schwartz Rounds – reflec­tions from the NHS. 

Dr Ali­son Robin­son, Emer­gency Physi­cian, South­ern Ade­laide Local Health Network

Schwartz Rounds pro­vide a struc­tured forum where clin­i­cal and non-clin­i­cal staff dis­cuss the emo­tion­al and social aspects of work­ing in health­care. The Rounds help staff feel less stressed and iso­lat­ed, have increased insight and appre­ci­a­tion for each other’s roles, and bet­ter focus atten­tion on pro­vid­ing com­pas­sion­ate care. 

Schwartz Rounds have been suc­cess­ful­ly run­ning in the US for over 20 years, with well doc­u­ment­ed impact on staff com­pas­sion and well­be­ing. Trans­fer­abil­i­ty and impact of inter­ven­tions across dif­fer­ent insti­tu­tions and coun­tries can be chal­leng­ing. This pre­sen­ta­tion dis­cuss­es the chal­lenges, impact and per­son­al reflec­tions of run­ning Schwartz rounds in the Nation­al Health Ser­vice (NHS) in UK. 

Ali­son trained and worked in the NHS in the North West of Eng­land until mov­ing to Aus­tralia in 2019 where she is also the Chair of the SAL­HN well­be­ing com­mit­tee and Clin­i­cal Lead for Schwartz Rounds. 

Cap­tions are auto-gen­er­at­ed, apolo­gies for any unin­tend­ed errors.