Accreditation 101
This is the primary method by which Accreditation Canada evaluates health organizations for evidence of required practices and standards.
What are site visits?
This virtual space is where staffs member can find organizational emergency preparedness plans, guides and policies.
What is NS Health Intranet and/or OP3?
This virtual system is where NSH staff reports any patient safety incidents.
What is SIMS (Safety Information Management System)?
This is when sites should be prepared for a site visit.
What is always?
Key components of workplace safety ROPs include workplace violence prevention policies, site workplace violence prevention plans, leadership safety rounds, quality teams and these committees, whose sole focus is workplace safety.
What is the Joint Occupational Health & Safety Committee (JOHSC)?
A mock tracer is a "dress rehearsal" for this key component of accreditation.
What is a site visit?
This concept refers to the importance of fairly balancing an understanding of system failure with professional accountability, and is based on behaving according to what is morally right and fair.
What is a just culture?
This everyday practice required of all staff greatly helps prevent and reduce healthcare-associated infections.
What is hand hygiene?
This is the best response if a surveyor asks you a question to which you do not know the answer.
What is "I don't know, let me find someone who knows the answer to that."
Safer and better care for patients are key goals of these initiatives, which are often supported by data taken from evaluations and displayed on scorecards.
What is (continuous) quality improvement?
These are the essential practices that we need to have in place to keep patients safe. They are based on national standards of excellence and best practice.
What is an ROP (required organizational practice)?
These are the four moments of hand hygiene.
What is 1) before patient contact, 2) after patient contact, 3) prior to aseptic procedure, 4) following exposure to bodily fluids
Fire safety plans are essential to emergency preparedness and facilitate effective staff response to events that correspond to this emergency colour code.
What is (code) red?
These are the staff members who accreditation surveyors are allowed to speak with as part of their assessment.
Anyone and everyone.
Wearing this helps patients/clients identify and communicate with staff members and is also essential to security & safety procedures.
What is an ID badge?
This Monday in October 2022 is the first day of site visits week for Nova Scotia Health.
What is October 17?
This virtual education system enables annual training for all staff members, and is a critical piece to meeting accreditation standards and ROPs.
What is LMS (Learning Module System)?
High alert medications, including narcotics, heparin, and concentrated electrolytes, are types of medications requiring safe ________ and ________ practices per an Accreditation Canada ROP.
What is storage and administration?
Self-audits, measuring product usage, and client satisfaction surveys are all effective ways of auditing this required organizational practice.
What is hand hygiene?
Key topics for frontline staff relating to patient safety include medication safety, incident reporting, hand hygiene, effective communication and this, which requires effective safeguarding of personal health information.
What is privacy & confidentiality?
Of Accreditation Canada's four levels of awards: Not Accredited, Accredited, Accredited with Commendation, and Accredited with Exemplary Standing, Nova Scotia Health received this level of accreditation in 2017.
What is Accredited?
This established process to evaluate each team member is a key aspect of continuous improvement in health care settings.
What is performance appraisal?
Date of birth and health card number are examples of these, of which two are required to ensure the correct patient receives the service or procedure intended for them.
What are patient/client identifiers?
During a site visit, accreditation surveyors may observe the state of the care environment, which may include noting cleanliness/tidiness, holes in the wall, broken equipment, medication expiration dates, "medication only" signs on medication only fridges, and sharps containers that are less than __% full.
What is 75?
This is the service staff can use to communicate with patients & families who do not speak or understand English.
What is interpretive services or language line?