The National Indicators for Quality Use of Medicines (QUM) in Australian Hospitals 2014 support measurement of safety and quality of medicines use for quality improvement purposes, and to help health services to drive changes in healthcare practice. The indicators have been designed for local use.
Obtaining a best possible medication history (BPMH) is an important first step in medication reconciliation.
Medication charts help to standardise medication management and can increase medication safety.
The charts are based on the best evidence available at the time of development. Healthcare professionals are advised to use clinical discretion and consider the circumstances for individual patients when using the charts for patient medication management in acute care settings.
Decision support tools can encourage shared decision making by informing discussions between clinicians and consumers.
Well-designed incident management systems assist patients, carers, families and the workforce to identify, report, manage and learn from incidents.
CARAlert collects, analyses and reports on nationally agreed priority organisms with critical resistances to last-line antimicrobials.
The Commission’s Antimicrobial Use and Resistance in Australia (AURA) Project contributes to the national program for surveillance of antimicrobial use and resistance in human health across Australia.
A hospital-acquired complication (HAC) refers to a complication for which clinical risk mitigation strategies may reduce (but not necessarily eliminate) the risk of that complication occurring.
Getting the best outcomes for patients and reducing harm are the goals of the Atlas series. Each Atlas examines a series of health topics, investigates variation and the possible reasons for it, and provides specific achievable actions to reduce unwarranted variation.
The rate of Staphylococcus aureus bloodstream infection (SABSI) in a hospital is considered to be an indication of the effectiveness of the hospital’s infection prevention and control program.
There are many different tools and resources that can help consumers and healthcare professionals share decisions together.
The Commission has developed a number of videos and webinars on shared decision making.
The Commission in collaboration with the Royal Australian College of General Practitioners (RACGP) developed the NGPA Scheme, which commenced on 1 January 2017.
The NGPA Scheme supports the accreditation of Australian general practices to the RACGP Standards for general practices and the RACGP Standards for point-of-care testing (as of November 2021).
The Commission works with national and international partners to improve the safety of medicines naming and labelling.
This page includes information on infection prevention and control (IPC) strategies for carbapenemase-producing organisms (CPOs) and links to additional resources.
World AMR Awareness Week is held from 18 to 24 November each year.
Ensuring that patients who deteriorate receive appropriate and timely care is a key safety and quality challenge. The Commission has introduced a range of systems to better manage recognition of and response to acute physiological deterioration.
These posters show the key steps for standard precautions and when caring for patients who require transmission-based precautions, due to a known or suspected infection.
The Australian Guidelines for the Prevention and Control of Infection in Healthcare was jointly developed by the Commission and the NHMRC. The Guidelines, together with Commission guidance for specific organisms, provide healthcare workers and health service organisations with support to develop tailored local protocols and processes for infection prevention and control.