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Leaving Hospital Well – Community of Practice


Health practitioners have a critical role to play in assisting people with disability to leave hospital well. The Summer Foundation’s Leaving Hospital Well Community of Practice (CoP) provides a platform to improve the discharge process.

The Leaving Hospital Well CoP is a national platform for health professionals to share their expertise, identify best practice for working with younger people with disability and complex support needs within the reform of the NDIS, and provide a supportive learning environment within the evolving context of health and the NDIS.

This platform will enable innovation sharing and promote positive communication and professional insight, for the ultimate benefit of health professionals and the people with disability that they support. Opportunities will be taken from this shared thinking to inform and influence policy and practice around the health and NDIS interface.

Who is the Community of Practice for?

Health practitioners working in hospitals and ambulatory care including:

  • Management
  • Allied health
  • Nursing
  • NDIS leads and champions

What are the benefits of of this Community of Practice?

  1. Learning from others outside your Local Health Area
    Learn from others’ shared experiences of working within the context of health and the NDIS. It will also encourage national dialogue for developing knowledge and ideas between health professionals.
  2. Development of evidence and best practice
    Provide access to an increased sample size and national context, and a wide group of experts with the ability to apply current working knowledge across Australia, to improve discharge processes and outcomes for people with disability.
  3. Opportunity for practical action research
    Reflect on current challenges in your practice and problem solve with other practitioners to develop clear and effective processes and solutions.
  4. A wider network of support
    Share information and experiences, engage in opportunities for creative thinking and innovation with a broader group of practitioners to overcome complex issues.

What do we hope the Community of Practice achieves?

  • Improved patient discharge outcomes
  • Improved patient satisfaction with discharge with the NDIS
  • Reduced length of stays in hospitals for participants, as well as reduction in re-admissions
  • Improved housing outcomes for participants and reductions of discharge to residential aged care

Outcomes for the CoP include

  • Identify best practice in discharge planning within the context of health and the NDIS
  • Ensure practitioners have the most up-to-date information on the NDIS and health interface
  • Develop expertise and leadership within the CoP member group
  • Identify strategies to improve patient/participant outcomes, that can be shared across health networks
  • Strengthen communication and consistency of practice at the health and NDIS interface

What does membership involve?

We are looking to develop an ‘active’ Community of Practice so as a member you would be involved in the following:

Co-design

  • Help to develop a CoP that is useful, targeted, effective and sustainable
  • Contribute to developing evidence of best practice discharge

Live connections on video

  • Attend online sessions with other community members – collaborating through creative problem-solving and leadership

Active online community

  • Engage and contribute via our Slack community to share ideas and real-time solutions to current barriers and challenges
  • Share useful resources – articles, resources, links to evidence
  • Networking with peers – break the silos with connections and groups
  • Disseminate information back to teams

Honing skills through coaching

  • Deepen your practice and skills-base through coaching others with their issues, challenges and questions

Format/Platform

  • Link to Zoom meetings for specific sessions
  • View information and discussion in Slack, an online communication platform

Upcoming topics for live online sessions

For inquiries, email us at training@summerfoundation.org.au

How to join

There are 2 ways to access the information on the Community of Practice.

The first way is to join our Slack platform. Slack is a group communication platform, you can find out more about Slack here. Some health services are not able to access Slack due to IT security.

The second way is to join our Community of Practice mailing list, where you can receive regular emails sharing information and resources (the same content shared from our Slack platform).

Please indicate which option(s) you would prefer in the form below. * Indicates a required field

An important note: While the Summer Foundation can help set up an effective and useful foundation for providers involved in discharge, the long-term aim is that this CoP will become sustainable without our input.

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