February 2004 - Intensive Care & Coordination Monitoring Unit

Items and Actions Responsibility
Actions Arising
- Development of the Nurse Liaison concept and model (Kate
Needham)
Mary Chiarella has indicated her support for the principle.
It was suggested that this role be viewed at nurse practitioner level.
The nurse liaison concept may not be appropriate for smaller hospitals
(base hospitals and smaller metro sites). The model for larger sites
would entail management of sicker patients in the ward areas.
ACTION: Nurse Liaison document to be recirculated to ICIG and the
Chief Nursing Officer.
- Funding of ICU RNs to conferences – outcome of discussions with
the CNO (Kate Needham)
The feedback has been that there is money with the Area DONs for the
purpose of supporting nurses for education and conferences. There
are also nursing scholarships available through a number of agencies
which can be applied for.
ACTION: Letter from ICIG to Area CEOs re provision of funding
support for ICU nurses.
- Results of Influenza Pandemic Exercise (Tony Burrell)
Dr Burrell was not at the meeting to provide an update, Dr Steevie
Chan provided an update.
Dr Chan contacted Dr Alex Warner, the Report has not been finalised ,
once finalised and released it will be circulated to ICIG. Dr Warner has
indicated her willingness to present the findings to ICIG at a
subsequent meeting following release of the report.
System monitoring – Report – Ron Manning
Adult activity was slightly higher than for the same period last year but
otherwise it is on par. The increased workload has been due to increased
care requirements.
Area Health Services are transferring largely within their Area. Out of Area
transfers have generally been for appropriate reasons.
There have been some problems noted within IAHS such as inappropriate
admissions. It was noted that IAHS did receive additional funding to open
extra beds.
ACTION: Professor Fisher to contact Dr Grant Simmons at IAHS to
discuss issues.
Steevie Chan and Malcolm Fisher to try and attend the next meeting
of the Area Critical Care Committee.
There was a request for workload from rural Areas (by AHS) to be included
in the report provided. Dr Manning stressed that while this was possible,
the MRU data only records retrievals conducted by the Sydney based
retrieval services, therefore patient retrieval conducted by the regional
retrieval services may not be captured, so the data provided may not
provide a complete picture of patient movement statewide.
SARS Taskforce – update on final report
The Report was released in January 2004.
The SARS Hospitals recommended in the Report still need to be
designated. There will be a need to implement staff training at these
hospitals.
Generally the staffing ratio required for SARS patients is 3:1 which will
have implications for staffing in ICU.
The Chief Nursing Officer will be meeting with the Chief Nurses from the
Asia-Pacific Region to discuss nursing implications of SARS.
Following discussions it was recommended that all ICUs should be looking
at surge planning.
Kate Needham and Lisa
Chytra
Kate Needham
Malcolm Fisher
Steevie Chan, Malcolm
Fisher.