Submission
Patient Safety Staff Escalation Pathway
Queensland Health’s Clinical Excellence Queensland has developed a Patient Safety Staff Escalation Pathway ‘to enable staff to escalate quality and safety concerns they believe have not been addressed [at] a local level in a time, proper, or sufficient way’.
AMA Queensland supports this recognition by the department that Queensland Health staff are fearful of speaking up about patient safety due to the risk of retribution, discrimination and negative career impacts. Doctors raised some questions about the proposed pathway with AMA Queensland, however, including the following which are set out in the submission:
- the confidentiality of and protections for reporters who use the pathway
- details about the recruitment, training and governance of Patient Safety Stewards
- the scope of concerns captured through the pathway, particularly that systemic issues can be raised and that the pathway does not duplicate existing processes such as that provided by the OHO and Ahpra
- the operation of the proposed HHS Safety Steward Executive Committees, and
- the pathway’s apparent bias towards local resolution.
