Emergency Department of Tawam Hospital Al Ain UAE bags two Healthcare Asia Awards 2019

It won the Patient Care Initiative of the Year & Patient Safety Initiative of the Year.

Adequate assessment of patient’s pain and its subsequent management is an essential component of an Emergency Department (ED) quality of care. Poorly managed pain in the ED may give rise to significant behavioural, psychological, and social issues among patients. ED of Tawam Hospital embarked on improving pain assessment, reassessment, and management following audits conducted in the first quarter of 2017, which revealed only a 50% against the Hospital’s Pain Assessment and Management Policy. Lack of policy awareness amongst staff, communication issues, and poor time-bound documentation contributed to poor policy adherence.

Using a multi-disciplinary approach, implementing multiple improvement strategies, and targeting the deficiencies, the pain assessment compliance reached 92% in the fourth quarter of 2017. Amongst the policies implemented were process mapping, introducing a pain audit tool, and updating pain management guidance. With this improvement, a new threshold of quality control in pain assessment and management had been achieved and sustained throughout 2018 with an average ED pain assessment compliance of 95.66%, well above the compliance rate of 90%. For this, Tawam Hospital won the Healthcare Asia Awards 2019 for Patient Care Initiative of the Year.

Tawam Hospital also won the Healthcare Asia Awards 2019 for Patient Safety Initiative of the Year for reducing the blood culture contamination (BCC) rate in its ED.

The Hospital initiated a process change in obtaining blood cultures to comply with the Abu Dhabi Health Authority benchmark of < 3% by the end of 2018. To achieve this, Tawam Hospital's Microbiology Department provided the BCC rate data from July 2016 to Jan 2017, which revealed a BCC rate of up to 4.8%. Old practices were reviewed. All members of the ED nursing staff were educated, particularly on the accurate method of collecting blood culture samples using a live demonstration and teach-back method. Monthly trends were audited, portfolio meetings held with the Multi-Disciplinary Team (MDT), and results were discussed along with strategies for improvement.

After process change, as early as February 2017, Tawam Hospital's ED BCC rate started to meet the compliance of <3%. Since then, the compliance rate persistently achieved for the remainder of 2017 and the whole of 2018.

The Healthcare Asia Awards 2019 was held on May 23, 2019 at the Conrad Centennial Singapore.

This year's nominations were judged by a panel consisting of Abhay Bangi, Partner, Life Sciences & Healthcare Lead, Ernst & Young; Dr. Loke Wait Chiong Executive Director, Healthcare Sector Leader, Deloitte; Dr. Zubin Daruwalla, Director, SEAC Health Industries Leader, PwC; Chin Chee Choon, Advisory Leader, Nexia TS; and Willy Leow, Partner, Risk Advisory Services, BDO LLP.

Check out the event photos during the awards night here.

If you would like to join the 2020 awards and be awarded as one of the most outstanding healthcare companies in the region, please email Julie Anne Nuñez at [email protected].