August 2020
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Help us support our IBD patients in the north
Anita, a local young mother, welcomed her first child with her husband just over three months ago, a beautiful baby boy named Riaan. Her pregnancy was challenging as Anita has Crohn’s Disease, a chronic inflammatory disease of the bowel that requires lifelong treatment and monitoring when the condition flares. Anita was initially diagnosed five years ago at Northern Hospital Epping and continues to receive care for her condition from our Inflammatory Bowel Disease (IBD) team. Like many chronic conditions, it came on suddenly and unexpectedly, and impacts on Anita’s quality of life as well as that of her growing family.…
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Medical students supporting our COVID-19 response
A number of final year medical students from Northern Clinical School are now casual Northern Health employees, playing an important role in helping us with the COVID-19 pandemic response. Dr Leonie Griffiths, Director Medical Education Northern Clinical School, explained the school is part of University of Melbourne located onsite at Northern Centre for Health, Education & Research (NCHER). As a result of the pandemic, the hospital has required additional help and the medical students were able to fill roles in different areas. “The students have been mostly assisting with contact tracing, PPE and in Pathology. They are actually doing two…
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Anytime, Anywhere Care
Laurelle Bland, Occupational Therapist – Hand Therapy Service, has been using Telehealth (video calls) in the treatment of hand therapy trauma for several weeks now. She says, “Telehealth has enabled me to effectively treat patients who are unable to attend due to COVID-19. It is also very cost and time effective for our rural patients, who can now receive treatment online rather than having to drive to Melbourne.” Laurelle says she has found video calls allow her to visually assess the patient rather than relying on subjective reporting over the phone, which then better guides her treatment. “I have even…
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Strategic Priority 4: Enabled staff, empowered teams
Our new Northern Health Strategic Plan 2020-24 has five priorities and one of them has a strong focus on our staff – enabling and empowering them to focus on safety and professional development. Working towards this goal means that our staff will have the skills, knowledge, motivation and opportunity to make a difference for our patients and each other. By providing education and development opportunities, staff will be empowered to improve the safety of the health service. “Education is not the only road to empowering our teams,” said Dr Megan Robb, Director of Emergency. “When we think about teamwork, our…
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Volunteers working together
Northern Health has over 300 dedicated volunteers, who work across our site to help us provide support and care to our patients. Unfortunately, during the current pandemic, our volunteers cannot be onsite. Although we miss them terribly, we are looking at innovative ways to keep in touch, and for them to know that all our staff and volunteers are in this together. One of these is a daily newsletter. Last week the Volunteer Services Team, sent out their 100th newsletter, that provides information, humour, (called ‘Vollie Jollies’) and inspiration that keeps the volunteers connected with each other. Henni Wade, Manager…
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Caring for the most vulnerable – Residential In-Reach
Our Residential In-Reach program provides specialist medical and nursing support to nursing homes seven days a week. With COVID-19, due to multiple outbreaks in our catchment, the team have substantially increased both medical and nursing staffing to meet the demand. With the recent outbreaks in St Basil’s and Heritage Epping Gardens, Dr Sandra Brown and her team were the first to arrive. Dr Brown, Residential In-Reach Program Lead, explained the team now have three doctors and three nurses available to go out into nursing homes seven days a week. “In these facilities, our team is usually the first on the…
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Better together
“We are in this together”… This has been one of the most commonly used phrases during the COVID-19 pandemic that people from all over the world have been using in solidarity. Together makes up one of our news values here at Northern Health, along with Safe and Kind – the three of which will help us to achieve our vision of a healthier community, making a difference for every person, every day, as outlined in our Northern Health Strategic Plan 2020-24. The current pandemic has shown just how critical it is to work together across our entire health service – and support and encourage one another while doing…
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Working together to fight COVID-19 #WeAreNorthern
Since the COVID-19 pandemic started, we have been extremely impressed by the response of all of our dedicated staff – who have all been model examples of how we incorporate one of our new values into our everyday work – Together. This afternoon, Siva Sivarajah, Chief Executive, led a Virtual All-Staff Forum to provide an overview of the issues we are facing with COVID-19 as an organisation, and how our staff continue to meet and respond to these ongoing challenges. “We continue to face many challenges, and have had to adapt our operations and learn how to work differently. But…