Roles and Responsibilities in IV/Medication Safety Management

  • Select staff with the relevant experience/knowledge and an interest in medication safety quality improvement and leadership progression in their area who are prepared to be active in this role and undertake responsibilities as listed below

  • 10-15% of total staff are requested to be link staff

  • Preferably work a minimum of 0.5 FTE (discretion of manager)

  • Must hold relevant competencies for your clinical area e.g. recent Medication and Fluid foundation programme completion, IV, CVAD, venepuncture and cannulation. In addition Clinical learning and Teaching education (via healthLearn) and where possible quality improvement/productive ward/RT2C training

  • Select enough staff so that all shifts are covered (including nights)

  • Have basic computer literacy (or be prepared to develop)

 Line Manager Responsibilities

  • Support your link staff with the below responsibilities (including release time to complete quality improvement and promotional activities)

  • Assist with supporting improvement initiatives and allow them access to data to support analysis and subsequent action plans.

  • Support link staff in attending area quality improvement related meetings

  • Support  them in completing their work plans, documents and sign off their learning agreements.

  • Ensure you have other staff who can perform IV, CVAD, venepuncture and cannulation endorsements to free up IV/Medication Safety Link staff in the quality improvement role.

  • Interest and understanding in the service/organisation's quality, strategic and operational planning as able, to ensure medication safety has a voice in further planning

  • Work in partnership with patients/consumers

  • Support equitable access and outcomes in medication provision

  • Proactively promote best practice in medication safety management alongside the interdisciplinary team, in your area/organisation

  • Keeping yourself up to date on practice changes and medication safety messages by participating on the forum.

  • A commitment to career development to support influencing practice in your setting

Plan

  • Ongoing staff performance assessment in their practice area with immediate feedback on performance. (Endorsement sign off, Clinical Practice Observations (CPO's)

Do

  • Establish clinical practice improvements (as a result of CPO's and or incident review), planning and executing promotional activities to communicate the priority medication safety has in the workplace/organisation)

Study/Check and Act

  • Re-evaluating the success of the promotional activities continuously, adjusting as required to sustain the focus. 

  • Ensure Link Staff and Line Managers are supported with their responsibilities

  • Provide education and resources to IV Link Staff in line with their roles and responsibilities

  • Assist in communicating division/organisation quality improvement initiatives across the community of practice

  • Communicate any changes to the  Link Staff program

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Page last reviewed: 18 February 2021