Trauma rehabilitation hui sparks cross-team collaboration

Ten teams from across Aotearoa gathered in Wellington on 22 June 2021 for their second learning session for the national trauma rehabilitation collaborative.

The teams are working on projects to improve care and recovery for trauma patients.

It was an exciting opportunity for teams to share their projects for the first time with the wider group. Teams shared how their projects were progressing, analysed any identified problems and challenges, and talked about the early stages of data collection. Many teams found similarities between their projects, meaning they could borrow solutions to shared problems.

Team storyboards were displayed throughout the day and made available after the session to support ongoing communication between teams.

Guest speaker Dr Melanie Cheung (Ngāti Rangitihi, Te Arawa) described the kaupapa Māori model of care at Te Puna Ora o Mataatua, the largest regional Māori health, social and employment provider in Aotearoa New Zealand. She talked about how to combine tikanga and mātauranga Māori into scientific and clinical practice – and why this was essential to create care pathways that are responsive to Māori and whānau. Melanie’s presentation brought to life the ways teams could keep consumer and Māori engagement at the forefront of their projects.

Staff from Health Quality & Safety Commission’s took attendees through quality improvement tools including process mapping, prioritisation of change ideas, PDSA cycles in action and applying measurement techniques for data analysis. Teams were encouraged to take away their learnings from the day and build on their work between learning sessions.

Remote support from the Commission is continued through a series of webinars and individual training sessions. On-site visits also started in June, though due to COVID-19 restrictions, some of these have been completed through Zoom.

The upcoming months will be an exciting period as most teams will be generating change ideas and testing their improvements through PDSA cycles. The next learning session is scheduled for October 2021.