Table 5 Australia

Individual/proactive

Collective/proactive

 • Patient survey at the state level about recent experiences and outcome of care

 • REACH – Recognize, Engage, Act, Call, Help is on its way: state initiative to empower consumers to ‘speak up for safety’, engage with their nurses or medical team, and request clinical review within 30 min

 • Consumers members of clinical governance committees

 • Involvement of consumers in accreditation standard development

 • Accreditation standard requires healthcare organizations to partner with consumers in planning, designing, measuring, delivery and evaluation of care

 • Co-surveyors where consumer are involved in the accreditation process as team members

 • Consumer involvement in regulation of healthcare research – 2 members are laypersons in all Human Research Ethics committees

 • Collaborative Pair Program – National program to promote meeting of accreditation standards requiring patient and consumer involvement. Support clinician-patient approaches.

Individual/reactive

Collective/reactive

 • Regulatory requirement for investigation most severe adverse events by a formal root cause analysis (RCA). Interviews with patients and next of kin may be part of the RCA.

  ◦ Apology to patient and family as part of open disclosure in RCA process

 • Consumer, patients, families can submit complaints to ombudsman