CareFlight is committed to the delivery of safe and high-quality patient centered healthcare through excellence in clinical governance. Clinical governance is defined by the Australian Commission on Safety and Quality in Healthcare (ACSQHC) as:
The set of relationships and responsibilities established by a health service organisation between its state or territory department of health, governing body, executive, workforce, patients, consumers and other stakeholders to ensure good clinical outcomes. – ACSQHC (2019)
The principles of clinical governance are:
Partnering with Consumers
Safe environment for the delivery of care
Governance, leadership, and culture
Patient safety and quality improvement systems
Clinical performance and effectiveness
The CareFlight Clinical Governance Framework describes how CareFlight authentically embeds and evaluates the principles of clinical governance throughout its services
The CareFlight Clinical Governance Framework can be found here.
Partnering with consumers
CareFlight recognises that the provision of patient centered healthcare requires a commitment to a partnership between patients, clinicians, families, and carers. The CareFlight Healthcare Statement reflects CareFlight’s commitment to this partnership, and the additional requirements required to support the provision of excellence in clinical care.
Working together – Everyone’s rights and responsibilities
While you are in our care, our staff enter into a healthcare partnership with you. This partnership means that both you and our staff have rights and responsibilities.
The CareFlight “Working Together” poster outlines your rights and responsibilities while our staff work with you to meet your healthcare goals.
The seven rights outlined on the CareFlight Working Together Poster align with the Australian Commission on Safety and Quality in the Australian Charter of Healthcare Rights. This Charter describes what consumers, or someone they care for, can expect when receiving health care in Australia.
Please Tell Us Initiative
CareFlight believes that an appropriate and open dialogue between clinicians, patients and accompanying family members or carers creates a positive patient clinician partnership. This may assist effective clinical decision making, create a better patient experience and ultimately contribute to improving patient outcomes.
To promote this clinically appropriate and open dialogue, CareFlight has expanded existing clinician engagement tools to develop the “Please Tell Us” initiative.
When you are in our care, “Please Tell Us” represents an invitation from the clinical teams for you to tell them if you have any questions or concerns relating to your care or safety, or the care or safety of the person you are travelling with.
Patient, carer or clinician feedback – Compliments, complaints and comments
We value receiving your compliments, comments, and complaints, so that we can continue to monitor, evaluate, and improve our services to ensure that we continue to deliver the highest quality of care to you.
Any person can provide feedback on a CareFlight service, including:
The patient/consumer
A parent, guardian, or carer
An advocate – this may be a relative, friend or representative chosen by the person
A non-CareFlight clinician
You can provide your feedback through the following means:
Scanning the QR code on a CareFlight Working Together Poster
Asking a CareFlight staff member to submit feedback on your behalf
If you have indicated that you would like to be contacted by CareFlight in relation to your inquiry or complaint, you will be sent an acknowledgement within two working days of CareFlight receiving it. The inquiry or complaint will then be investigated according to our Clinical Incident, Complaint and Feedback Procedure. Further information may be requested from you to support the investigation. The duration of the investigation will generally depend on how serious the issue is, and the type of investigation required. CareFlight aims to have all complaints resolved within 30 working days. At the conclusion of the investigation, you will be provided with the outcome.
CareFlight investigates all complaints to the best of our ability regardless of anonymity of the person submitting it.
Advocacy
If you are making a complaint, you can engage an advocate to assist you and speak on your behalf. An advocate may be a family member, a cultural liaison, friend or a health professional such as a family GP.
Please advise CareFlight when an advocate is used to ensure that we do not violate anyone’s privacy. We may request documentation to support this.
Patient information leaflets (PILs)
CareFlight has developed Patient information Leaflets which contain specific medical and other information for consumers of our retrieval services. These leaflets can be accessed by clicking on the link below.
You may have heard about hospital acquired infections (HAIs). CareFlight brings a hospital level of care to you in our retrieval service, and infections (germs) can be transmitted while on your journey with us. CareFlight does transport infectious patients so we have developed specific protocols based on international best practice when transporting such patients and apply special aircraft specific decontamination processes after each transport. These processes significantly decrease the chance of disease transmission and make transportation safe.
Hand Hygiene
Hand hygiene is the single most important factor in reducing transmission of germs. All staff have access to hand sanitiser to help prevent transmission of germs. We recommend that you use it as well: please ask your clinical staff if you cannot see the hand sanitiser available for your use. Bottles of hand sanitiser should be located in all patient care areas of CareFlight including road vehicles, all aircraft and loading/staging areas.
