{"id":4770,"date":"2014-12-24T00:05:42","date_gmt":"2014-12-23T13:05:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.rch.org.au\/news\/?p=4770"},"modified":"2015-04-29T11:41:37","modified_gmt":"2015-04-29T01:41:37","slug":"why-not-wallaby","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.rch.org.au\/news\/why-not-wallaby\/","title":{"rendered":"Why not Wallaby?"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"QOC_Wallaby\"<\/a>Wallaby Ward, or Hospital in the Home, saw a 21 per cent increase in referrals in 2013\/14 significantly contributing to patient access and flow at the RCH.<\/strong><\/p>\n

The RCH@Home Department consists of multiple programs: Family Choice, School Care, Home Care, Post-Acute Care and Hospital in the Home (HITH). All in-patient wards at the RCH are given animal identifiers; in 2013 HITH was given the identifier \u2018Wallaby\u2019, to reflect how the ward operates just like any other in the hospital.<\/p>\n

Wallaby allows the provision of acute care to RCH patients in the comfort of their own home; surrounded by parents, siblings and friends. Whilst at home children are visited and cared for by a team of qualified RCH nursing and allied health staff who communicate regularly with their primary treating medical unit. Children and their families may also be involved in tele-health sessions with their medical unit or be visited by the Wallaby registrar, to ensure that they are receiving the best care.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe children seem to be happier, they seem to recover more quickly,\u201d Wallaby Registered Nurse Deborah Jenkins said. \u201cThey are more active within their home; they have normal interactions with their siblings and go to school.\u201d<\/p>\n

Caroline Ivory\u2018s son Aidan is a Wallaby patient.<\/p>\n

\u201cI can\u2019t see any change in the level of care that we receive, whether we are at home or in the hospital. I think he actually recuperates better at home than in hospital,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

In 2013\/14 the Wallaby team conducted a multi-pronged campaign to raise awareness within the hospital and address barriers that may have prevented children from being referred to Wallaby Ward.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn the last year RCH staff have recognised Wallaby as a fully functioning ward, like any other ward in the hospital,\u201d wallaby Nurse Unit Manager Brenda Savill said.<\/p>\n

The team conducted a \u2018Consultant Survey\u2019, reviewing RCH\u2019s in-patient wards and uncovering the barriers preventing patients from being referred to Wallaby. Wallaby staff then focussed on addressing those barriers with the hospital\u2019s medical teams. Since then<\/p>\n

Wallaby Ward has seen a 21 percent increase in admissions.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re always getting new patients groups, which is really exciting,\u201d Brenda said. \u201cWe\u2019re always asking staff and patients to challenge us. We\u2019ve asked staff to tell us what they need, even if they think it\u2019s unfeasible, just to see if see if we can accommodate it and improve our services.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI think we\u2019ve become more aware of what the hospital needs and we\u2019ve tried to resource that and worked with different teams, for example we\u2019ve started working with the Complex Care team to see how we can help their patient group, so those children are not coming in and out of hospital all the time,\u201d Brenda explained.<\/p>\n

\u201cWallaby has really helped us move patients from the acute phase of their care in the hospital, to supporting them at home with their families and loved ones,\u201d Deputy CEO John Stanway said. \u201cThis has had a very significant impact on improving appropriate discharge rates and helping patient flow throughout the hospital.\u201d<\/p>\n

This article originally appeared in the RCH 2013-4 Quality of Care report, find it here. <\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The RCH Wallaby ward allows the provision of acute care to RCH patients in the comfort of their own home; surrounded by parents, siblings and friends.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":93,"featured_media":4771,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4770","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-in-the-news"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.rch.org.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4770","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.rch.org.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.rch.org.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.rch.org.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/93"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.rch.org.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4770"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.rch.org.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4770\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4773,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.rch.org.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4770\/revisions\/4773"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.rch.org.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4771"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.rch.org.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4770"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.rch.org.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4770"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.rch.org.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4770"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}