A short visit to hospital in Canberra this week where Canberra Health Services (CHS) has had its high standard accredited by the Australian Council on Healthcare Standards for the next three years.
Congratulations to the Service which had to pass more than 150 actions in eight national standards to win the highly accreditation.
Congratulating the CHS on its impressive achievement, ACT’s Minister for Health was particularly impressed by one program in which patients were actively involved in their care from the moment of pre-admission to their discharge.
The Minister is reported as saying ‘it was great to see some of CHS’s programs, such as Enhanced Recovery After Surgery receive a special mention”.
For PS-sssst! however, mentioning that particular program could see the recipient’s eyebrows reach for the ceiling.
By abbreviating Enhanced Recovery After Surgery’ one gets to use the short word ERAS which when ‘mentioned’ sounds remarkably like ‘ERRORS’, a description of hospitalisation most patients would prefer to avoid.
Abbreviating to the fullest!
And while we’re in the world of abbreviations, an award for absolute abstraction is presented to the Australian Energy Market Operator (AEMO) for its commitment to purity exposed in a recent article recently.
Unveiling a statement that points out that unless something is done about planning for future electricity generation in Australia the country is going to go black, AEMO delivered the document Electricity Statement of Opportunities as its source for explaining the situation.
While the drama of an electricity crisis is someone else’s problem, PS-sssst! takes the opportunity to congratulate AEMO for its pure and complete commitment of using the true art of abbreviation and shorthanding its report as ‘EMOO’.
In these fast lives of shortcutting and timesaving it’s not often the hardworking word ‘of’ is included in an abbreviation and some of us pedants think there should be more of it!
Well done AEMO!
In time we don’t trust!
And just for the short-handed record now, last weekend another football crowd stood quietly in a ‘Minute of Silence’ before the start of a Rugby League match to respect the death of a highly respected identity who had made a major contribution to the game in his lifetime, and to one of the clubs in particular.
The past-Chairman of the club concerned may have donated a committed and unselfish 20-years or more to the club concerned, and the grateful crowd stood quietly to offer a minute of silence to show their personal respect and gratitude for his contribution.
Such a pity their ‘minute’ of respect lasted only 39 seconds.
What’s 20 years of commitment when 39 seconds of a minute will do?
Someone should buy someone else a stopwatch!
The art of old age
Giveaway time again now in which PS News’s resident giveawayer, Rama Gaind gives away free prizes to lucky readers who manage to answer her embarrassingly easy questions and win her embarrassingly valuable free prizes.
This week Rama has ABC’s resident doctor Norman Swan’s latest book So You Want to Live Younger Longer on offer for two lucky readers to win if they can tell her what the good doctor’s goal was when he sat down to write his new book.
Dr Swan says his goal was that regardless of our ages, it was to help us get to our 90s and beyond with the brain of someone much younger.
The first two correct readers who had that answer and were first to trouble the judges rumbling around the PS News’s Barrel of Booty were Ian M from Victoria’s Department of Environment, Land, Water and Planning and Scott P from the national agency Services Australia.
Congratulations to Ian and Scott and thanks to everyone who joined in with the fun. The prizes will be on their way to the new owners very soon.
For another chance of trying your PS News luck to scoop up a Rama freebie just visit her weekly reviews of the Book Orphan Rock at this PS News link and/or her also-lucky other review of Book Lonely Planet’s Experience Guides: Scotland at this link.
Good luck to everyone who puts Rama through her paces and takes up her challenge.
Going ahead
And finally, as the month of August gusts its way into history, five public services recorded record readerships of PS News to reach new highgrounds.
Congratulations now for having bigger PS News readerships than ever go to the Victorian Public Service which passed 22,650 registered readers for the first time; New South Wales Public Service that passed 22,250; Western Australia Public Sector over 18,300; Queensland Public Service 15,350; and South Australian Public Service 10,500.
Welcome to all the new readers who make PS News their source for news about their PS, it’s our pleasure to report it all for you.
Bear I mind however the fact that if you all stopped doing what you’re doing we’d have nothing to write about so you’re really only getting your own information back each week.
Thank goodness you’re all keeping busy!
Until next week…..
Something to share?
Send to [email protected]
(And, yes, it can be anonymous!)
