Patient Safety and Infection Control

At St. Joseph’s ensuring our patients receive exceptional and safe patient care is at the core of our mission of helping all who come to us for care to maintain and improve their health. In our work as health providers we continuously strive to minimize the effects of injury, disease and disability for all those who come to us for care. 

St. Joseph’s patient safety and infection prevention and control initiatives are regularly reviewed and fine-tuned to ensure the safety and well-being of our patients, personnel and visitors. This is achieved through ongoing monitoring, education, collaboration and feedback to ensure that we provide the best quality healthcare to our patients.

Hand hygiene

Reducing infection is everyone’s responsibility. We want to encourage anyone who comes to us for care to do their part in infection prevention and to feel comfortable reminding any care provider to wash their hands. This is an important step in being a partner in your own care. It’s ok to remind us!

St. Joseph’s always aims to improve hand hygiene compliance as part of our relentless pursuit of safety - a strategic priority. Ultimately, we would like to surpass our overall goal of 95 per cent.

Patients and residents will notice communication though various promotional materials including bedside posters, buttons, social media, hospital elevator wraps and surveys.

We are asking patients and residents to ask us to clean our hands and do their part in cleaning their own.

Thank you for your support in continuing to promote and improve hand hygiene compliance, ensuring a safe environment for all, and earning the complete confidence of those we serve.

Please review the following documents: 

 

Patient Safety Initiatives

Patient safety is always in the forefront of the care provided at St. Joseph’s Health Care, London. Here are some of the initiatives underway at our hospitals to ensure the safety and well-being of our patients, staff and visitors:

Falls prevention

At St. Joseph’s Health Care London, your safety is important to us. We want you to have a safe visit.

You will see our Fall Prevention poster in outpatient and clinical areas across our organization.

Safety is everyone’s responsibility. As patients, caregivers and visitors to St. Joseph’s, you can help us prevent falls.

We want you to have a safe visit. Let our staff know if you:

  • have recently experienced a fall
  • have difficulty with balance and walking
  • are worried you might fall during your visit

If you are worried about a potential fall, St. Joseph’s has wheelchairs available for use during your visit.

How can you help prevent falls at St. Joseph’s?

St. Joseph’s need your help to identifying potential slips, trips or fall hazards to reduce and prevent possible injuries to our residents, patients, staff, volunteers and visitors.

Here’s how you can help:

  • If you see trip or slip hazards, please notify a St. Joseph’s staff member so we can ensure everyone’s safety.
  • Review the
    falls prevention brochure for patients and families
     for strategies to support falls prevention at home or when coming into hospital.

Have you heard about ConnectCare?

Since 1987, ConnectCare has provided peace of mind for thousands of subscribers across Southwestern Ontario.

ConnectCare offers state-of-the-art technology allowing individuals to remain living safely and independently at home for as long as possible. With a simply press of a button, the ConnectCare medical alert system summons help when it´s needed most.

Connect Care is owned and operated by St. Joseph’s and based at Parkwood Institute, learn more >

Infection safety champions

The champion initiative is a partnership between Infection Prevention and Control (IPAC) and Occupational Health and Safety Services (OHSS) to promote a culture of staff and patient safety through education, monitoring, and formal auditing of principles and practices related to infection prevention and control.

The transmission of hospital acquired infections is a major patient safety concern. The new infection safety champions will be front-line influencers in the fight against hospital acquired infections, however each and every employee is accountable in ensuring that staff and patient safety is paramount in their area.

Champions are a resource to colleagues and leaders in their area on items such as: isolation practices, hand hygiene, additional precautions, routine practices, and more.

Patient safety WalkRounds

During WalkRounds leaders visit care units and discuss safety improvements with the care team. Safety feedback can range from the efficient use of space, to product storage, to workload issues, to ensuring visitors understand the importance of safety. All topics are open for discussion. Through WalkRounds leaders and frontline care providers are working together to continuously enhance the safety of the care and work environment.

Patient safety indicators

St. Joseph's top priority is the safety of our patients

Health care associated infections are an unwelcome reality in modern health care settings across the globe, and as such we strive to prevent and control these infections in our hospital sites.

Patient Safety Indicators and Infection Rates
St. Joseph's publicly reports on these patient safety indicators and infection rates:

(Note: Rates of ventilator-associated pneumonia and rates of central line infections are not reported because these indicators are specific to critical care or intensive care units, which St. Joseph's does not have.)

St. Joseph's is not included in the annual Hospital Standardized Mortality Ratio (HSMR) report released by the Canadian Institute for Health Information (CIHI). Results are not released for ineligible hospitals (those with less than 2,500 HSMR cases in each of the four years being reported) because the low numbers make the results less stable and, therefore, less reliable.

St. Joseph's infection prevention and control practices, including environmental cleaning practices, are aligned with the Provincial Infectious Diseases Advisory Committee (PIDAC) best practices documents, as well as the Ministry’s of Health and Long-Term Care's “Just Clean Your Hands” program. Independent of these initiatives, along with our partner London Health Sciences Centre, we have also formed a Hand Hygiene Improvement Project Steering Committee, to provide direction on development, implementation and evaluation of an effective, sustainable hand hygiene program in our hospitals, which will further support our efforts to continually improve the care we deliver.