Open | New Plymouth Injury Safe supports Patient Safety Week

New Plymouth Injury Safe is once again supporting good communication between patients, whānau and Taranaki District Health Board (DHB) staff – the focus of this year’s Patient Safety Week, a national campaign which runs from 30 October to 5 November.

Taranaki DHB CEO, Rosemary Clements said "Taranaki DHB takes patient safety seriously and values the importance of communicating well with patients and their whānau. Our health care services strive to provide the best and safest care possible, every time."

The theme for this year’s campaign is carried on from 2015 ‘Let’s Talk,’ with several areas in the spotlight.

These include falls prevention, encouraging discussion with patients and whānau around their health care and advance care planning, checking patients understand their treatment and what happens when they are discharged or transferred to another care setting.

Taranaki DHB Service Improvement Advisor, Mary Bird said, "Patients have a role to play in Patient Safety Week and a range of resources have been produced to support the Let’s Talk theme. We want patients to be involved in their care, to ask questions, to be fully informed and to be given options."

Throughout the week there will be displays and activities at Taranaki Base and Hawera Hospitals, as well as a number of community health providers and aged care facilities. These include Patient Safety Week information displays, a falls prevention display, patient safety videos, an Instagram selfie competition, a spot the difference competition, a pop up tea ‘shop’, and speech bubbles with messages from staff about patient safety.