Patient safety

Keeping our patients safe while they are in our care is very important.

Sometimes incidents do happen while patients are in our care, and we ensure that we learn from these incidents to stop them from happening again.

Clinical incidents are when a patient has been unintentionally or unnecessarily harmed by an event in a clinical or hospital setting.

We are committed to learning from clinical incidents and hospital acquired complications to improve our care and systems. Investigations are conducted to understand what, how and why the incident occurred and how to prevent it happening again.

Falls

Paediatric falls are relatively rare in hospital. Most falls happen in children who are under 10 years old and are related to child falling from a bed or a cot when their parent or carer is briefly distracted or leaves the child unattended with the side bed rails down.   

While the numbers of falls are much lower than for adults who go to hospital, we are equally concerned about the harm that might happen. Therefore, we make sure the patient is seen by a doctor and we do ongoing assessments.  

Pressure injuries

Pressure injuries happen when there is ongoing pressure to an area of skin or tissue. They happen when a patient is unable to move due to illness, injury or surgery. Sometimes the pressure causes the skin and soft tissue to breakdown and a sore can happen. The majority of the reported pressure injuries at CAHS are picked up early and recover well. 

Pressure injuries are highly preventable, but unfortunately can still happen. The most common types of pressure injuries are caused when a cast is applied to treat a broken bone, or when a medical device, for example breathing or feeding tubes that cause pressure to the very young skin of a child.

We conduct ongoing training for nurses ensure the delivery of best practice to prevent pressure injuries. We have a specialist senior nurse who assesses patients who develop a pressure injury and advises on the best care for these patients.  

Patient identification