Nurse Spotlight - OPH's Jeanine Alford

In celebration of International Nurses Day 2021, we are shining a spotlight on our exceptional nurses.

This year the Sir Charles Gairdner Osborne Park Health Care Group is focusing on nurse innovation in the face of an unprecedented global health crisis. The pandemic has opened up opportunities for us to stop and explore what we do and how we do it, providing nurses a way to do things better.

Today’s spotlight is on Jeanine Alford, Clinical Nurse Manager, Ward 4 at Osborne Park Hospital, for introducing the use of an electronic tool to help our medical, multidisciplinary (MDT) and nursing teams more accurately estimate a patient’s discharge date and ensure the patient’s rehabilitation outcomes are met.

Accurately estimating discharge in a patient’s rehabilitation journey also helps our staff ensure patients’ length of stay meets benchmarked data or criteria.

Previously the estimated discharge date (EDD) was estimated by the teams based on a weekly MDT meeting not utilising any benchmarking tools and on subjective assessment and feedback.

The introduction of an electronic tool to estimate the discharge date based on admission Functional Independent Measure (FIM) and the Australian National Sub-acute and Non-acute Patient (AN-SNAP) code on Ward 4 ensures that the care provided is completed in a timely way. It enables the team to understand that there is an expected endpoint in rehabilitation and assists the team to provide timely conversations with family and patients and plan for discharge.