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​The team from the Women and Children Health Service department at the Cypress Regional Hospital in Swift Current has been honored with the Salus Global’s moreOB Recognition Award.

Salus Global is a specialty consulting and implementation firm focused on helping healthcare organizations improve performance and quality outcomes through increased interprofessional collaboration, and moreOB is one of their programs. MoreOB (Managing Obstetrical Risk Efficiently) is a comprehensive patient safety improvement, and professional development program offered for caregivers and administrators in hospital obstetrical units.

“In the midst of the pandemic, this team went over and above to reduce fears and uncertainty there by improving the patient experience,” stated Nicole Vance, department manager. “This team turned a stressful and difficult year into an opportunity to show resilience and highlight the exceptional team they are.”

The purpose of Salus Global’s Recognition Award is to celebrate Milestone achievements and recognize high performance. The criteria for the award are the same as what Salus Global has identified as key elements to the moreOB program, which was instituted at Cypress Regional Hospital in 2015. These elements include core team effectiveness; leadership support and involvement; effective, high-quality communication; engagement and involvement of all professions and application to practice.

The team at Cypress Regional Hospital was notified that they received this award for their work to improve the teamwork, collaboration and processes related to identifying and managing pre-term labour.

Over the past year, a transformation has occurred during Core Team meetings as members have stayed focused on their goal and what needs to be done to accomplish it.

“The team is a multidisciplinary team consisting of physicians, a midwife, LPNs and RNs from women’s and children’s and critical care, as well as paramedics from the local ambulance service,” stated Brandi Zacharias, Nursing Unit Coordinator for the Women’s and Children’s department. “Everyone worked together to collaborate between departments and improve patient care. Staff from all units were engaged and excited to make changes to better care for patients in pre term labour on the women’s and children’s unit, the ER department as well as for transport to tertiary centers. The teamwork and collaboration between units was really amazing to see.”

“You truly perform as a team, as you share responsibilities, perform within your roles and strengths, and add to your team the members needed to accomplish the goal,” said Heather Coutts, lead facilitator for Salus Global. “You have also demonstrated that there is trust, an ability to engage in a healthy debate and commitment to each other and your patients. You have demonstrated effective communication with clarifying and reviewing next steps and responsibilities at the end of each meeting. You have also closed the communication loop with participants and other departments with changes that have been made as a result of activities.”

The unit has received support from leadership at the unit level and all the way up to the provincial level.

The Saskatchewan Health Authority supported the decision to implement the moreOB program across all 17 maternal care sites in fall of 2018.  This program, supported by both the SOGC and HIROC, helps the SHA establish a provincially standardized team approach to maternal care and decision making.  The Program is supported by the Maternal and Children’s Provincial Programs and Maternal Child Outreach Coordinators, such as Christina Santo, who help to support to program here in the province.

 The Core team members for the moreOB team in Swift Current pose with their award.

According to Salus Global, “While you do not have all professions active on your Core Team, this Milestone attracted the interest of the different professions. This shows that you are choosing topics that people see as relevant and applicable to their roles. By adding ad hoc members to your team from other departments, you are showing that you recognize that importance of interdepartmental and interprofessional relationship and the connectivity/reliance that there is throughout the healthcare system.”

Utilizing approaches such as practice simulations helped to reduce fear at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic and is something to acknowledge and celebrate, Salus Global added.

“There was so much fear and uncertainty at the beginning of this pandemic. As a team, we did weekly simulation to better prepare and work through processes together as things were ever changing. I really can’t say enough about the nursing staff and physician’s on our unit, everyone was so eager to prepare and patient with all the changes that were happening. They really are a great team,” stated Zacharias

“You are consistently excelling at applying knowledge into practice safely by utilizing simulations, and inviting all applicable roles to contribute,” Salus Global stated. “You review activities to identify opportunities to improve processes and identify lessons learned. You effectively monitor staff engagement and the impact of the activities through confidence survey’s, not only within your unit, but with other applicable units as well.”

Story via Sask Health Authority