A state-wide Mental Health Improvement Program Community
About the MHIP Community
The Mental Health Improvement Program (MHIP) is establishing the MHIP community to:
Reducing compulsory treatment in Victorian Mental Health and Wellbeing Services
Reducing compulsory treatment
Reducing compulsory treatment was a key recommendation of the 2021 Royal Commission into Victoria’s Mental Health System.
Supporting Victorian health services to strengthen suicide prevention and response
About our work
Suicide prevention is a shared responsibility across Victoria’s mental health system.
Approximately half of all individuals who die by suicide have engaged with mental health services within 12 months of their death. This represents an important opportunity for public mental health services to strengthen suicide prevention practices and improve outcomes for people seeking support during periods of distress, heightened vulnerability or crisis.
Working towards the elimination of restrictive practices in inpatient services
Elimination of restrictive practices
The MHIP partners with clinical and non-clinical workforce teams to design and test improvements that:
Albury Wodonga Region Colonoscopy Recall
In 2022-23, Safer Care Victoria worked with Albury Wodonga Health, Albury Wodonga Private Hospital and Insight Private Hospital to contact around 2,000 patients who had a colonoscopy performed in the region since 1 January 2018.
An investigation had found that some colonoscopies performed in the region were incomplete, which may have affected the accuracy of the resulting diagnoses.
Many affected patients underwent a repeat colonoscopy as a precautionary measure.
Duty of Candour resources for patients, families and their carers
The Duty of candour is a new legislative requirement for Victorian health services, which came into effect on 30 November 2022.
The Duty of candour builds on existing elements of open disclosure as outlined in the Australian Open Disclosure Framework and encourages open, honest communication when a patient has suffered a serious adverse patient safety event while receiving care.
What are adverse and sentinel events?
Sometimes things go wrong in healthcare, which can result in a patient being harmed. In these cases it’s important for the health service to:
- understand what happened
- understand how it happened
- make recommendations to reduce the chance it will happen again.
Learning from these events is a powerful tool to prevent harm going forward.
This page provides information on Safer Care Victoria’s role and the actions health services take when things have gone seriously wrong with patient care.
Posted on 03 Nov 2022
Alert: Flow control tubing for mechanical infusion pump
Safer Care Victoria was recently notified of 5 adverse events where incorrect tubing had been connected to a mechanical infusion pump, resulting in an anaesthetic agent being administered at a higher rate than intended.
Poor design of tube labelling and lack of other system-based safety guards likely contributed to these adverse events.
Just culture resources
Our Just Culture resources support health services to strengthen their safety culture and improve patient experiences and outcomes.
What is Just Culture?
Just Culture is part of a safety culture that applies a systems perspective when developing organisational processes, including the review of adverse patient safety events. It enables a workplace where employees feel safe to report adverse patient safety events. It promotes the concept of shared accountability between the organisation and the people in the system, supporting a fair (‘just’) approach.
Safewards Victoria Trial
The Safewards model and associated interventions identify the causes of behaviours in staff and consumers that may result in harm - such as violence, self-harm or absconding - and reduce the likelihood of this occurring. Independent evaluations of three trials of Safewards within Victoria, across three different healthcare settings, demonstrate that Safewards can be effective at reducing conflict where mental health consumers require care.