Quality improvement - University of Wollongong

Quality Improvement Guide

Download the Quality Improvement Guide (pdf) - this guide provides information for clinicians from organisations and services participating in PCOC to use their reports and the suite of PCOC quality improvement tools for continuous improvement, and to demonstrate improvement in patient and family/carer outcomes

Quality Improvement Plan and Report Template

Download the Quality Improvement Plan and Report Template (docx) - provides information for clinicians from organisations and services participating in PCOC to use their reports and the suite of PCOC quality improvement tools for continuous improvement, and to demonstrate improvement in patient and family/carer outcomes.

PCOC Communities of Practice

PCOC Communities of practice flyer (pdf) - PCOC Communities of Practice (CoP) harness the collective expertise of the PCOC Community and allow similar services to share resources and learnings with a focus on quality improvement. Membership of PCOC CoPs have a commonality, such as the same model of care, capability service level, setting of care or PCOC champion role and meet to share, learn, collaborate, and innovate.

Resources to ensure improved palliative care outcomes

PCOC Report resources
Quality improvement reports
Case review templates
Audit tools
Implementing, embedding and sustaining PCOC
Accreditation
Palliative care standards

Download the How to read your PCOC Patient outcome dashboard (pdf) – explains the information contained on your PCOC patient outcome dashboard.
Download the RACE to quality improvement (pdf) – includes a set of steps (Review, Act, Communicate, Evaluate) that you need to undertake to integrate outcome measurements and continuous improvement.

These four PCOC resources help improve consistency in PCOC practice. Two of the resources focus on palliative care phase, one focuses on family / carer issues and one focuses on addressing a symptom that is of most concern to patients, which is pain.

Download the Severe family/carer problems template (doc) - helps improve the consistency of the assessment and management of severe scores on the family/carer domain of the Palliative Care Problem Severity Scale (PCPSS)
Download the Severe pain template (doc) - helps improve the consistency of the assessment and management of severe pain scores on the PCPSS and/or the Symptom Assessment Scale (SAS)
Download the Patients in unstable phase of four days template (doc) - can be used to identify reasons why patients remain in the unstable phase for more than three days, and to ensure a patient’s palliative care phase ends appropriately
Download the Deaths outside the terminal phase template (doc) - helps improve consistency in the correct identification and recording of the terminal phase

These audit tools support palliative care services in ensuring clinical assessment and quality improvement needs are met.

Download the Quality Improvement Audit: Response to PCOC assessments (docx) - helps identify areas for improvement in the documentation of the five clinical assessments
Download the Quality Improvement Audit: Phase Definitions (docx) - helps identify areas for improvement in the application of palliative care phase definitions

Download the 'Implementing PCOC: a guide for services' (pdf)

This resource provides step-by-step guidance to assist palliative care services to develop a plan for implementing PCOC, or to monitor and evaluate progress and identify areas for improvement. It also includes a readiness assessment.

Download 'PCOC Self-Assessment: Key strategies and enabling factors’ (docx)

This tool can be used to identify gaps to:

Embed the PCOC assessment framework into routine practice
Drive quality improvement through using PCOC outcome reports, and progressing organisational change and service redevelopment
Improve health outcomes and experiences
Achieve PCOC benchmarks

Download the Mapping PCOC to the National Safety and Quality Health Service (NSQHS) Standards resource (pdf).

This resource supports PCOC services in Australia to achieve accreditation. It describes how PCOC can be used to meet standards. Examples of how to draw upon PCOC to demonstrate that standards have been met are included.

Download the Mapping PCOC to the National Palliative Care Standards 5th Edition resource (pdf)

PCOC supports services to meet palliative care standards. This resource illustrates ways you can use PCOC to demonstrate that you are meeting standards.

© PCOC UOW 2020. The intellectual property associated with a suite of resources on this website is owned by the Palliative Care Outcomes Collaboration (PCOC), University of Wollongong. PCOC has placed resources in the public domain and is happy for others to use them without charge, modification or development. These resources cannot be modified or developed without the consent of the University.

PCOC is a national palliative care project funded by the Australian Government Department of Health, Disability and Ageing.