3 Quality care standards in Australia

In Australia, the National Safety and Quality in Health Service (NSQHS) Standards were established to ensure a consistent national level of patient care and to set a baseline standard for healthcare quality. These standards were developed through a collaborative effort involving the Australian Government, state and territory governments, clinical experts, patients, and carers. They serve as the benchmark for accrediting healthcare services and provide a common framework for quality improvement initiatives, ensuring adherence to these standards.

Reviewing the NSQHS Standards can help you determine if your project idea aligns with any of them. Many of these topics are extensively researched and published, and numerous validated audit tools are available to support your project. For example, the recognising and responding to clinical deterioration is widely researched around impact of rapid response teams on patient outcomes, and nurses ability to recognise and respond to deterioration; partnering with consumers often is associated with patient centred care and co-designing aspects of healthcare, preventing and controlling infections is widely linked to hand hygiene audits and research related to minimsing secondary infections related to invasive catheters.

References

Australian Commission on Safety and Quality in Health Care. (n.d.) National Safety and Quality Health Service Standards. https://www.safetyandquality.gov.au/publications-and-resources/resource-library/national-safety-and-quality-health-service-standards-second-edition