Participant Support Procedures > Ambulance or Hospital Procedure
Authorised by Chief Executive Officer
Issue Date: 13 May 2024
If a participant requires emergency medical assistance due to accident, injury or other health crisis, act swiftly.
Call other staff to assist (via On Call if necessary) and call 000, notifying the ambulance service of as many details as possible about the person’s condition. Apply first aid as appropriate.
Locate all available information on the person’s disability, current medications and current doctor. The Participant Information Forms have information and are located:
•electronically in individual files,
•in hard copy in folders at the relevant sites
Re Day Activities: Some medication information for participants at Lalor St is in the current Medications folder in the Medication cabinet, and some may be found in hard copy in individual’s files.
At sites other than our SDA homes medication lists may not be most recent as we are reliant on others providing this information.
Some participants have individual health care plans that are saved electronically in their files under Health but are frequently in hard copy as well. These may be relevant in the emergency.
It is important to notify family or residential staff as quickly as possible of the health issue so that they can seek out any other relevant information.
If ambulance personnel take the person to hospital, a staff member may travel in the ambulance if needed to keep the person calm, otherwise follow the ambulance and stay with the person until it is appropriate to leave family or other carers with them.
Hospital stay
If the participant is hospitalised the team leader or manager will need to organise whatever support is required, liaising with the hospital staff.
Team leaders will need to readjust shifts and inform support staff
Discharge
When the participant is discharged from medical care any information including prescriptions or wound care must be relayed to anyone who supports the individual and needs to know.
Shift notes / Case notes
After a health event that requires paramedic or medical attention, an incident report should be completed as soon as possible by the most senior worker present, detailing what happened and the times involved. This should then be given to the worker’s supervisor for final completion and adding to the Incident register.
Where the participant’s support is affected, communicate any unavailability or necessary information to the other support areas, subject to consent to share.