Mrs Natalia Adanichkin¹, Professor John E Greenwood¹, Mrs Rochelle Kurmis¹, Mrs Kathryn Heath¹

¹Adult Burn service, Royal Adelaide Hospital, Adelaide, Australia

Abstract:

The performance of our organisation is driven by meeting pre-determined Key Performance Indicators such as, but not limited, to length of inpatient stay and hospital acquired complications. The success of our service is in the Inter-disciplinary leadership, and vision for how the service should look in the future, and how that might be achieved. This ensures that patient care and outcomes are maximised.

For a successful burns service, multi-disciplinary inclusion is paramount. Our driving force being the collaboration between senior medical and nursing leaders, and more recently senior allied health representation.

Whilst belief by the burns team that you have a high quality service is important, demonstration of this to others allows for improvements in process and outcomes not otherwise identified internally. In 2006 we sought independent review of our service by the American Burn Association and were successful. This independent review process was a key motivator to improve internal procedures. This included, but was not limited to, our quarterly Mortality and Morbidity reporting meetings and improved documentation of our quality management activities.

Maintenance of current, evidence based practice is essential for patient care. Collaboration with the Joanna Briggs Institute, has provided us with external support as well as education opportunities to up-skill staff to various levels of expertise regarding quality improvement, and evidence synthesis and implementation. This complements our rigorous research and development programs across the multi-disciplinary spectrum.

This presentation aims to provide an overview as to the evolution of a burns unit to a verified Burns Centre

Biography:

Natalia is Nurse Unit Manager of the Adult Burn Service at the Royal Adelaide Hospital and has over 20 years of experience in the burns.