Page 132 - Hospital Authority Convention 2017

Service Enhancement Presentations
HOSPITAL AUTHORITY CONVENTION 2017

F2.7 Staff Engagement and Empowerment 13:15 Room 421

Make a Change in Eight STEPS – Ensuring Correct Patient Identification in Accident and Emergency Department
of Pok Oi Hospital
Wong WMB, Poon KM, Ong KL, Wai YLS, Chan MY, Leung YYH
Accident and Emergency Department, Pok Oi Hospital, Hong Kong

Introduction
It is the responsibility of every healthcare worker to ensure correct patient identification. Wearing 2D barcode wristband
is a helpful procedure in ensuring this, and in inpatient wards, with the use of unique patient identification (UPI) device,
the accuracy and safety is enhanced, especially in the collection of laboratory specimens. However, this is not a common
practice in local Accident and Emergency departments (AED). The AED of Pok Oi Hospital (POH) is the third AED to roll out
the application of 2D barcode wristband to all attending patients. In order to ensure a smooth change, careful planning and
staff engagement are essential. The main concern among staff is increased workload and stress. The stress comes mainly
from unfamiliar workflows. A common query was “why do we need to change?” Kotter’s Eight-step Change Model is applied
to introduce this new practice.

Objectives
(1) Communication with staff so that they understand the need to change, what is to be changed and how this change is
made; (2) Participation of staff in the change process; (3) Correct steps to ensure correct patient identification in laboratory
Tuesday, 16 May Methodology
specimens collection.

8-Step Model was applied:
(1) Create urgency – sharing of patient misidentification incidents to staff.
(2) Form a powerful coalition – identify change leaders from the department and invite them as team members.
(3) Create a vision for change – ensure the idea is simple and understandable.
(4) Communicate the vision – talk about the new practice in every occasions and address staff’s concerns.
(5) Remove obstacles – acknowledge their worrisome thoughts, let the staff understand how technologies can help.
(6) Create short-term wins – publicly recognise staff who helps in the project.
(7) Build on the change – encourage feedbacks, analyse the feedbacks, improve the workflow.
(8) Anchor the change in corporate culture – report the progress and highlight those achievements in every occasion,
publish the successful stories.

Results
Application of 2D barcode wristband to all AED patients in POH commenced in December 2016. Staff complied with
the new workflow and no patient misidentification incident was found in the laboratory specimen collection so far since
implementation.

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