Aotearoa Patient Safety Day date and theme confirmed

The Health Quality & Safety Commission will promote Te Rā Haumaru Tūroro o Aotearoa | Aotearoa Patient Safety Day on 17 November 2020. The theme is Getting through together | Whāia e tātou te pae tawhiti.

Our chosen theme for Aotearoa Patient Safety Day comes from Getting Through Together | Whāia E Tātou Te Pae Tawhiti, a national mental health and wellbeing campaign by All Right? – Community and Public Health (a division of the Canterbury District Health Board) and the Mental Health Foundation of New Zealand.

The focus is on thanking health care workers for their efforts and dedication through responding to recent crisis events and the COVID-19 pandemic. We are encouraging them, and their organisations, to promote health and wellbeing as an essential component of ‘getting through together’ and creating an environment of health care worker and consumer safety.

Our intention in 2020 was to align with the global World Health Organization campaign held in September. However, due to the New Zealand election and impacts of COVID-19, we are delaying our promotion until later in the year.

While we are running a much-reduced campaign to previous years, it is important to acknowledge the hard work and dedication of our health care workers, and to highlight the need to take care of their mental health and wellbeing during difficult times.

We are working on a small range of campaign activities, which will be largely social media based. Organisations can participate in as many or as few activities as they wish. To be added to the list for distribution of information, please email us at communications@hqsc.govt.nz.

Activities for Aotearoa Patient Safety Day include:

• short videos from health care workers, consumers and whānau about the impact of crisis events and how they dealt with them
• a webinar focusing on mental health and wellbeing, to be held on 17 November. Information about the webinar and how to register will be sent out to our Aotearoa Patient Safety Day contacts, and promoted on the Commission website, in our e-Digest and on our social media channels
• links to existing mental health and wellbeing resources
• a social media toolkit.

We also encourage organisations to hold a morning or afternoon tea, or other event, to engage as many health care workers as possible on 17 November (alert levels permitting). This is an opportunity to acknowledge that this has been a difficult time, encourage staff to connect and support each other, and to say thank you for their hard work and dedication. The Commission will develop an information pack for these events including team and connection-building ideas.

Aotearoa Patient Safety Day is supported by ACC and PHARMAC.

For more information about Aotearoa Patient Safety Day, contact us at communications@hqsc.govt.nz.