The organisation has robust arrangements for health protection and works collaboratively with other organisations to protect the health of patients, staff and the local population.
| Area |
Core principle |
Components |
| Emergency planning |
The organisation has robust arrangements for responding to emergencies and ensuring business continuity. |
- The organisation develops and regularly tests plans for responding to emergencies
- The organisation works collaboratively with other organisations to ensure an effective joint emergency response
- The organisation develops and regularly reviews its plans for business continuity, considering a range of possible circumstances
|
| Infection prevention and control |
The organisation has robust arrangements for infection prevention and control. |
- The organisation develops and implements evidence-based infection prevention and control strategy and policies which are reviewed regularly
- The organisation works collaboratively with other organisations to reduce infection risk to patients, staff and the wider population, taking into account the local epidemiology of infection
- The organisation’s approach to antibiotic stewardship minimises the unnecessary use of antibiotics and the risk of antibiotic resistance
|
| Immunisation |
The organisation ensures the optimal delivery of immunisation programmes in order to protect staff and patients. |
- The organisation maximises opportunities to provide information on, and where appropriate to offer evidence-based immunisation (both opportunistic and routine) to patients and staff
|
| Screening |
The organisation contributes to the delivery of high quality evidence-based screening programmes. |
- Where the organisation delivers any element of a screening programme, this is regularly monitored and subject to quality assurance to ensure high quality delivery
- The organisation maximises opportunities to provide information on and where appropriate offer evidence-based screening to patients
- The organisation makes use of ‘teachable moments’ in the delivery of screening results
|
Case study
Training staff in some hospital outpatient settings to screen for domestic violence
Domestic violence (DV) was known to make a notable contribution to assaults presenting at A&E in the Royal Free London NHS Foundation Trust but the impact in other areas was not known. A simple DV screening tool was designed with a referral pathway to hospital, based on hospital-based independent domestic and sexual violence advisor (IDSVA) DV support services. Frontline staff in three outpatient settings (GUM, community gynaecology and HIV) were trained to ask all patients about DV. In an eight-month period the prevalence of DV in patients using the three services ranged from 7% to 29%, and 77 people were referred to the IDSVA. Having an IDSVA enhanced the number and uptake of referrals and hospital referrals were more likely to be classified as high risk than referrals from other organisations.
