February 2019
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Consumers visit our new Ward 17 (ICU)
Yesterday, 13 of Northern Health’s consumers and volunteers completed a tour of the new Ward 17 (ICU) as part of Northern Hospital’s Stage 2 Tower Expansion Project. Since September 2017 to mid 2018, consumers and volunteers at Northern Health were involved at all stages of the design process, and provided valuable ideas and suggestions from their experiences at Northern Health and other hospitals. This feedback was considered and incorporated into the plans for the tower expansion design, and the consumers and volunteers had the opportunity yesterday to see the design come to life! Mary De Gori, Director of Capital Planning…
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Record patient numbers in Northern Hospital Emergency Department history
Last week, Northern Hospital’s Emergency Department experienced the highest demand in its recorded history. This culminated on Monday, 25 February, when the department saw the highest number of patient presentations to date – caring for 343 patients in just one day. From Monday, 18 February through to Sunday, 24 February, the Emergency Department experienced a record average of 307 presentations a day. During that time, the team met the ‘ambulance offload’ time, which is a fantastic achievement for Northern Health, and makes us one of the best performing hospitals in ambulance offload rates. Cindy Joffe, Divisional Director, said the department…
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Community Wellbeing: Healthy Eating Q&A at Pacific Epping
This morning, Northern Health hosted its first community wellbeing session with our neighbours from across the way, Pacific Epping Shopping Centre. Dietitian, Emily Farrugia, hosted the session, discussing all things healthy eating in Q&A style, to help answer any questions the visitors and shoppers had about their diet. Customers had the chance to get tips and advice on how to adopt smarter eating habits, and learn about Northern Health’s dietetics services in the community. “Today was a great opportunity to engage with our local community and bust some myths around nutrition and health – it was great to see plenty…
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Northern Health launches Q-Flow
Today, a new patient check-in system called Q-Flow has launched in Specialist Clinics at Broadmeadows Hospital. In the coming weeks, Q-Flow will be rolling out across the Craigieburn and Northern Hospital campuses. Q-Flow is a patient flow management system that is designed to improve both the patient and clinician experience whilst attending Specialist Clinics. The new check-in and billing system will help to improve patient flow, reduce waiting times for appointments and increase clinic efficiency. Patients are able to check themselves in for their appointment via self-serve kiosks, similar to check-in kiosks at airports. Once checked in, patients receive a…
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Recognition Awards: Celebrating Staff Excellence
This morning, Northern Health hosted our second Quarterly Staff Recognition Awards ceremony. These awards have been designed to formally recognise outstanding contributions by our employees and celebrate staff excellence. Northern Health Chief Executive, Siva Sivarajah, presented the awards to this round of recipients. “We have over 5,000 staff in a wide range of areas, dedicated to providing great care for our patients and we would like to reward their hard work and commitment to patients,” Siva said. In this round of awards, a new category was introduced – Clinical Excellence. This new category was recommended as part of our ‘High…
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Welcome to culturally safe Northern Health
Northern Health continually strives to improve its responsiveness to diversity and the language, religious and cultural needs of our community. We provide the same quality of service for all patients and their families, regardless of their ethnicity and ability to speak English – an important consideration given our patients are born in 184 countries, speak 106 languages and follow 90 religions and beliefs. This year, the demand for our Transcultural and Language Services (TALS) has grown by 8% every month, resulting in the hiring of four additional in-house interpreters, bringing the total to 42. New welcome signs currently being installed…
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Dr Laura Raiti: Junior Doctor of the Year
Laura Raiti started working at Northern Health as an intern in 2016. Just two years on, after commencing her paediatric training with us, she was awarded the 2018 Victorian Junior Doctor of the Year award, by the Confederation of Postgraduate Medical Education Councils (CPMEC). Laura tells us about her Northern Health journey. “Following my internship and paediatric training, I was lucky enough to come to Northern Health as a paediatric resident for six months in 2018 and hope to return for another rotation in the future as a paediatric registrar. In between my rotations, I have an ongoing casual contract…
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Kim Kennedy: Making a difference to dialysis patients
Kim Kennedy is a former Broadmeadows Hospital dialysis patient using her own experience to help others. She first connected with Northern Health in 2011, having end stage renal failure, and started peritoneal dialysis in 2013 until she converted to haemodialysis in 2016. The diagnosis of kidney failure came as a shock to Kim, who had never been in hospital apart from having her children. “I remember I was outside one day and for some reason my ankles felt really funny, which I thought was strange because you’re not really meant to feel anything there. I looked down and they were…