Patient safety at the heart of new agreement
An agreement signed today between Nelson Marlborough Health (NMH) and the Royal Australasian College of Surgeons (RACS) strengthens NMH’s commitment to building a better workplace culture – with patient safety at the heart of it.
Under the memorandum of understanding, both organisations will work together to ensure that our surgical supervisors have the necessary skills and behavioural attributes needed when they train and support medical interns and new graduates.
NMH Acting CE Peter Bramley described the agreement as a significant moment and a further step towards improving workplace culture.
“If we want to see new models and transformation of patient care we need to see people working in teams,” Peter says.
“One of our main values is ‘respect’. This agreement and the other initiatives we have underway will help us tackle, in a constructive way, the undesirable behaviours that are detrimental to our values.”
Peter says that Nelson Marlborough Health’s union partners have been very supportive of the agreement from its early days.
He also credits head of surgery Dr Ros Pochin for driving the initiative and ensuring that NMH got to the point where RACS would sign the agreement.
Professor Spencer Beasley, RACS Vice President, describes Ros as a “local champion of change”, and congratulated Nelson Marlborough Health for being the first district health board in New Zealand to be ready for the level of commitment required under the MoU.