January 27, 2022
Hello Western Health ED Team,
In response to feedback from you, and the growing MHAOD presentations to our Emergency Departments we are seeing year-on-year, extensive work has been undertaken by ED Leadership, in conjunction with the WH AOD team, and our emergency mental health service providers. Over the next five weeks we will launch a series of clinical support tools related to the care of patients with mental health and Alcohol and other Drugs related issues who present to our emergency departments.
Starting Monday the 31st of January, look out for weekly communication detailing new resources available to staff. The newly available resources come in the following forms; Western Health Guidelines, Emergency Medicine QRGs and We Learn modules.
Each week will focus on a new education topic, presented to you by experienced speakers in videos and webinars for ED staff.
The hosted webinars will run for up to an hour every Thursday each week. Each will cover a different education topic, and involve a presentation by one or more speakers, followed by Q&A. Please feel encouraged to ask questions.
Each webinar will be open to all staff who work in ED, and recorded in case you miss it. We are scheduling the webinars in double staffing time to enable greater participation from our staff. We recommend heading outside (weather permitting!) and tuning in on your mobile device. We hope to see many of you in attendance.
Education and Learning would love to know how you see yourself in terms of your knowledge and confidence providing care for patients with mental health or AOD care needs.
This six question survey is anonymous, and will be used to inform future mental health and AOD education for staff.
We strongly encourage you to add your voice to this feedback process. Thank you!
Please note this is a pre-program survey. If you’re coming back to this email after engaging in this month’s learning, think about how you would have responded previously.
Throughout the month, we will be referring to the following courses on WeLearn that have been developed for our staff:
These courses are the culmination of shared effort among ED Leadership, Drug Health Services, and the CL Nurse Psychiatry Team. Each module is designed to fill potential gaps in staff learnings to maximise staff safety and positive patient outcomes when managing patients with mental health and/or AOD care needs.
We ask all staff to engage with this online learning, at your own pace, over the next five weeks.
Soon to be live for staff is the Mental Health and AOD Education and Support page – a new page on unitED where we will catalogue and link the resources introduced over this program for your ongoing access.
We’ll be updating this page as we go, and the page will remain in use in future as a central hub of information to support self-directed learning on all things mental health and AOD-related.
Look out for these posters coming to an ED near you!
The posters contain a list of each webinar date and topic, and a QR code that will take you directly to our new Mental Health and AOD Education and Support Page on unitED. Check in each week for updates.
Please reach out if you have any questions. The ED Education Team, including our Mental Health Nurse Educator Pallavi Pathak, are happy to help.
– Be safe – be smart – be kind, the unitED Team –
– To review previous News bulletins, please see here. –
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