Background
Logan Hospital is a rapidly expanding 435 bed secondary teaching hospital in south-east Queensland. Hospital medical emergencies are attended by the MET, consisting of a Medical and Intensive Care Unit (ICU) registrar, ICU outreach nurse, ward nursing staff and resident medical officers. I have previously been a part of the MET at Logan Hospital as a basic physician trainee and General and Geriatric Medicine advanced trainee, and I was aware that there was no existing MET education program. I recently completed a 6 month position in the Medical Education Unit supervised by the Director of Clinical Training, where I underwent training in simulation education.
Change
I planned a quality improvement project targeting the education gap for the MET with simulation training. The focus of the simulation program is to improve non-technical skills such as communication, leadership, delegation and graded assertiveness to improve patient safety and outcomes.
Support was required from multiple stakeholders, and I anticipated that there would be barriers including high workload preventing release of staff to attend simulation and finding a time that all members of the MET team could attend. I followed the Metro South Health Clinical Improvement Unit Framework which provided a structured approach for planning a quality improvement activity, which led to more effective communication with stakeholders.
I spoke with clinical and education leaders in other health services to research, pitched my idea to stakeholders including directors of medical and nursing units and gained their support. A pilot MET call simulation was conducted in January 2023, 5 months after project commencement. There is now support from all involved departments for this education program to be conducted monthly.
Learnings
I adopted a learning and growth mindset, rather than focusing on the outcome during the planning phase. Instead of measuring success by whether a simulation was conducted, I saw each component of the planning and implementation phase as a learning opportunity, and a chance for conversation to be generated around the importance of education for the MET.
I gained experience and skills during the process; including appreciation of governance structures, effective communication strategies when engaging multiple stakeholders and addressing competing interests.
I have learnt that an idea is worth pursuing even if it seems difficult. Although a successful outcome is always desirable, there can be opportunities for learning, growth, connection, building relationships and sparking ideas in others through all the steps of implementing change.