October 2018
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A family caring for our community
Today marks National Emergency Nurses Day, an opportunity for Northern Health to honour the commitment and hard work of our nurses in Victoria’s busiest emergency department. As part of the celebrations, the Emergency Department launched their new motto – ‘we are a family caring for our community’ – a department-wide initiative, which underpins the team approach our nurses adopt to provide the best care in a high pressure environment. Northern Health experienced a 7.9 percent increase in emergency presentations in the last financial year, with 99,400 presentations and 28,800 ambulance arrivals. For the last 12 months, Northern Health has sustained…
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How does research impact on Indigenous health?
Northern Health’s Research Week kicked off with guest speaker, Professor Sandra Eades presenting on the role of research in improving health for Indigenous Australians. “In terms of Aboriginal health, the number one thing is partnerships with local Aboriginal people and building an agenda with them around improving health outcomes,” she said. Professor Eades is Associate Dean (Indigenous), Faculty of Medicine, Dentistry and Health Sciences, University of Melbourne. She is a Noongar woman from Mount Barker, Western Australia and is Australia’s first Aboriginal medical doctor to be awarded a Doctorate of Philosophy (2003). Over the past decade, she has made substantial contributions…
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One Good Street: connected communities reducing hospitalisation
What if the power grid of care, safety and support for our elderly citizens lies in the communities, and not in hospitals? Matiu Bush, a clinician, had an 83 year old retired GP living on his street. The GP’s daughter and Matiu’s friend used to call him for help often. The full-time working daughter and an anaesthetic consultant was struggling to be a full-time carer for her father as well. “He used to fall out of bed and she used to call me to pick him up and put him in bed. This would happen around 3 am,” Matiu said.…
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Research Week Presents: Dr Yin Lim
Dr Yin Lim, Northern Health’s Consultant Haematologist has embarked on a research journey looking at blood clot formations and a test which would predict an impending event before it happens. “When patients ask us if they will get a blood clot again, we can tell them that there is a 30% chance of getting a clot in the next 10 years. This test aims to predict the clot formation and give patients a more precise answer,” she said. Dr Lim is a passionate researcher and mentor, and had her first exposure to research as a medical student, continuing to be active in research during her basic and advanced physician…
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Polaris: Our New LMS
Ladies and gentleman, we are excited to announce the winning submission from the ‘Name our new Learning Management System’ competition. And the winner is….Polaris! Northern Health’s eLearning Manager, Bec Gilbert, tells us they wanted to brand it with a name that represents our organisation – that’s where staff came in. “The new LMS will be an integrated and collaborative online learning space into the future. Because the LMS will be such an integral part of the Northern Health education experience, we wanted our employees to help name it,” she said. The brief was simple. Come up with a single-word name…
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Respiratory Function Lab Turns One
This week marks Northern Health’s Respiratory Function Laboratory’s first birthday! Located at Northern Hospital Epping and having completed over 4,400 tests in its first 12 months, the service continues to grow. Jane Poxon, Acting Chief Executive, congratulated the team on their expansion of services over the first year. “Well done to Katharine See and the team,” Jane said. “There are more tests now available, which will assist with better diagnosis and management of patients,” she added. “I’m also pleased that over the next 12 months the services will expand to Broadmeadows Hospital, providing on-site testing to support the asthma and…
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Safe Practice Forum: Stories we can all learn from
Ever since the Ancient Roman times, forums have been a place to get together and exchange ideas and views, discuss, learn and possibly walk out with a completely new idea, solution or a changed opinion. At Northern Health, the Safe Practice Forum (SPF) is a monthly meeting intended for all staff where we share patient stories. Bill Shearer, Executive Director Transformation, Quality and Safety, says those stories can help us as an organisation provide a safer and better patient experience. Stories are sometimes drawn from our incident or feedback systems, and have been reviewed by our clinicians to identify improvements…
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Research Week Presents: Dr Amanda Quattrocelli
Dr Amanda Quattrocelli is an Obstetrics and Gynaecology resident in the maternity department at Northern Health. Working with women treated at Northern, she has been researching on gestational diabetes and has looked at early glucose tolerance tests and whether they are making a difference in the outcomes of our mothers and their babies. She explains that gestational diabetes, a type of diabetes women may develop during pregnancy, should go away after pregnancy although it is well known that if women have diabetes in pregnancy, they are at a increased risk of developing overt type 2 diabetes later in life. “We…