Quality policy

OUR COMMITMENT

Vita First Aid Pty Ltd (VFA) is committed to ensuring the highest level of quality process for its customers, patients, staff, and contractors. This is managed by a commitment to maintaining ISO 9001:2015 certification standards, through a systematic and holistic approach to quality assurance.

Purpose

VFA operates under an integrated management system framework and we aim for a holistic approach to planning, managing, organizing, and monitoring internal and external processes used by VFA to ensure that:

  • VFA does what it will say it will do.

  • We are respectful of open and honest communication.

  • We take ownership of our work.

  • Our people are trained and competent to perform their roles.

  • We have a proactive approach to identifying and managing hazards and risks.

  • We monitor compliance to ISO 9001:2015

  • We continually strive for improvement and the delivery of Best Care.

Management Review and Reporting

VFA continually reviews the performance of its quality and safety systems. Quality processes are used to maintain Best Care monitoring and reporting systems to be able to report to multiple levels of management within VFA.


Review and reporting provide management with:

  • Assurance that VFA is meeting its requirements

  • The status of Best Care implementation and effectiveness 

  • Assurance that VFA is effectively managing risks

  • Information regarding patient experience and their needs

  • Assurance that systems and processes are implemented and effective

  • Improvement and innovation initiates to improve performance

Best Care Responsibility 

We are all responsible for providing an experience that is safe, effective, caring, and connected for every patient every time. Teams are supported to implement organisation-wide strategies to achieve best care goals. 

To assist delivery of Best Care:

  • Patients' families and communities draw on their care experience and knowledge.

  • All staff shape the quality of the experience whether clinical or non-clinical roles

  • Clinical leaders and managers guide, promote and embed Best Care in our services

  • Director leads the achievement of Best Care for every patient.


Internal Awareness 

Our focus on Best Care awareness and communications assists VFA to achieve its vision of outstanding emergency healthcare every time. 

Quality communication is critical to keeping staff informed on important information including changes in policies, procedures, and clinical practices. Internal communication platforms provide mechanisms to:

  • Prompt Best Care, she knowledge and best practices

  • Share policies, procedures, clinical practice guidelines, and other documents.

  • Collaborate, problem solve, and strengthen our internal community and ultimately work better together.

Clinical practice improvements are communicated and reinforced via amendments to clinical practice guidelines and clinical work instructions. Learning is facilitated and disseminated via continuing professional development, safe care communique, clinical bulletins, and video round table discussions.


External Awareness 

We are committed to connecting VFA’s people and communities to build knowledge and understanding and promote actions for the better health of Victorians. Our External communication platforms reflect our commitment to deliver better patient outcomes and create a better place to work by:

  • Building trust in the community 

  • Educating the community on how to respond to health emergencies

  • Enhancing the communities understanding of the service provided by VFA

  • Providing transparency with the community about performance

  • Provide our patents with opportunity to provide feedback and share their experience 

We utilise various channels to engage with the public including:

  • VFA website

  • Social media

  • Community partnerships 

Learning and Development

Our vision of Outstanding Emergency Health Care cannot be achieved without an outstanding team. Our culture of continual development of all staff enable us to deliver Best Care to every patient every time and improve patient outcomes by:

  • Improving interval capacity and accountability to continually learn.

  • Encouraging our people to reflect on and share their experiences and learnings with others.

  • Developing people to enable personal, professional and career progression.


Safety Accountabilities

We are committed to providing a physically and emotionally safe workplace to ensure that:

  • Our patients and staff are safe and experience no harm.

  • Care for each patient is free from medication error, infection risk, avoidable pain, avoidable clinical deterioration, and physical and psychological harm.

  • We provide a supportive environment for staff to speak up and provide feedback.

  • Action is taken to prevent and minimise harm from incidents.

Patient Experience and Consumer Participation 

Patient experience information and feedback is critical to improving performance and driving innovation. We recognise that partnering and engaging with the community and clients to better understand their expectations of the service that we provide is integral to efficiently meeting the needs of patients and clients.


We have various methods of partner patients and clients to obtain their feedback, including:

  • Patient experience surveys

  • Patient complaints, compliments, and commendations 

  • VFA website feedback and social media channels

Patient Complaints, Compliments and Commendations

VFA is committed to understanding and learning from patient feedback, focusing on areas of improvement. VFA recognises that complaints and compliments are vital pieces of information regarding patient experience and we provide clear channels and opportunities for patients to provide us with feedback.

The VFA complaints management process is clearly articulated in the feedback management procedure and the complaints policy.

Patient Experience Surveys

VFA conducts Patient Experience Surveys aimed at obtaining feedback from patients and consumers to ensure that we are aware of the experiences patients and consumers are having with our services.

Internal Audit Framework

Internal Audits are conducted across VFA to provide independent and objective advice and assurance to management that VFA has effective risk management, control systems, and governance processes in place.

These audits cover all policies, procedures, practices, work instructions, and systems, or processes implemented by VFA to determine that they are fit for purpose, implemented, and effective. Audits may also be conducted to observe behaviors or practices with the intent of identifying risks and improvement areas.

Improvement and Innovation

Improvement and Innovation are critical to VFA’s Quality and Safety system. The scale of improvement will determine which areas of the organisation will establish and implement the improvement.

We support Best Care projects to improve the quality, safety, and experience of our care and the systems that support us to deliver Best Care.

Best Care projects seek to:

  • Improve the processes, practices, and systems that support us to create and support a Best Care experience.

  • Create partnerships between regions, divisions, and health services to solve everyday challenges.

  • Strengthen VFA’s continuous improvement focus and capability by facilitating experiential learning

  • Share project learnings and outcomes across VFA to promote consideration of wider implementation.

Risk Management

 As we deliver our Best Care commitment, we face a high degree of unpredictability every day. VFA is exposed to a wide range of inherently high risks and varying levels of hazards as we intrinsically operate in an increasingly complex emergency health environment whilst responding to urgent requests for assistance from event participants.

Given the diversity and complexity of the risks faced by VFA, defining what an acceptable or tolerable level of risk is difficult, as acceptability or unacceptably will vary depending on the prevailing circumstances and the context of each risk with reference to the expectations of the Government and the broader Victoria community while upholding our commitment to patient care and “zero harm culture” for our staff. VFA is committed to:

  • Embedding risk management into organisational governance and accountability structures, key strategic processes, and decision-making processes.

  • Proactively identifying and managing its risks and opportunities at all levels.

  • Striving to continually improve its risk management processes