Last year, Northern Hospital Epping was the first hospital in Victoria and the second in Australia to install a Share the Dignity #Pinkbox Dignity Vending Machine.

Share the Dignity created the #Pinkbox Dignity Vending Machine as the world’s first completely free vending machine that dispenses period packs for women in need. Currently, there are 160 Dignity Vending Machines installed across Australia, stocked from the generosity of the public and corporate donations. Since being installed at Northern Hospital, ours has become one of the most-used in the country, dispensing just under 500 period packs a month.

Dr Katharine See, Director of Respiratory Medicine, was instrumental in initiating the project last year and is thrilled that Northern Health has been able to assist so many women in the north.

“It’s fantastic that we’ve been able to support women of our community in this way. Particularly at a time like COVID-19, where we’re seeing increased economic strain for families and increased rates of domestic violence being reported, it’s really important that we support women through initiatives like this,” she said.

“In the first 12 months the #Pinkbox Dignity Vending Machine has dispensed over 5,800 packs so that makes it one of the busiest machines in Australia – so there’s a really significant demand,” Dr See added.

Over the last year, staff from different departments have come together to help facilitate the running of the machine, ensuring that women are always able to dispense products when needed. Respiratory Department Administration Assistant, Robyn Phelan, has taken on the role to ensure the vending machine always has adequate stock as she believes it’s really important for women to have dignity.

“It affords all women the right to have access to these products. I’m sure some of the people who can’t afford to always have them appreciate this service and I think it’s great that we can do that,” she said.

Robyn works closely with Share the Dignity to ensure we have adequate stock so the machine is always full. “I’m happy to be involved – it’s such a simple thing for us to do but I think the impact is quite big,” she said.

Support Services also play an important role, in particular Lilliana from their team, who has taken it upon herself to stock the machine every day.

“There’s a really lovely sense of ownership, contribution and commitment from all different women in the organisation to make sure that we are supporting the community,” Dr See said.

“Even just how a small action can make a really big difference. It’s a nice sense of achievement and accomplishment that, at a time where things are so difficult for so many people, we can make life just that little bit easier by doing something really simple and just showing a little bit of kindness,” Dr See added.

Share the Dignity works to rid Australia of period poverty. They run a number of different fundraising drives throughout the year and there’s many ways people in the community can get involved. Click here for more information about Share the Dignity.

Featured Image (left to right): Robyn Phelan, Respiratory Department Administration Assistant and Sonja Stamatovska, Cleaner

For the past four years, the Northern Health Foundation Major Raffle has raised important funds to support patient care. Launched this week, this year’s raffle will make a real difference for our patients by supporting the purchase of cutting-edge medical equipment – Intestinal Ultrasound (IUS).

IUS is used on patients with inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) to help diagnose and monitor conditions such as Crohn’s Disease or Ulcerative Colitis. IBD can be debilitating and cause severe complications when not monitored and treated appropriately.

Proudly supported by our major sponsor, Maxxia, the raffle aims to raise $150,000 to fund this important diagnostic equipment. At present, any patients requiring this service need to be referred to alternative health services. Introducing IUS to Northern Health will alleviate the need for patients in the northern community to travel further to receive the care they need, and will help provide better outcomes for our patients.

According to Associate Professor Mayur Garg, Director of Gastroenterology at Northern Health, “IUS offers the opportunity for a safe and cost-effective way to manage patients with IBD, and may reduce the need for them to undergo invasive tests like endoscopy. It is increasingly being adopted worldwide, and will bring Northern Health to the forefront of care of patients with IBD.”

“I think if you’re a member of our hospital community and if you have received a benefit from that, it’s a nice way to pay it forward – to be involved, buy a ticket and help support – as it might even be for you or a relative one day,” she said.

Tim Bond from Maxxia said, “Maxxia is Australia’s leading provider of novated car leasing services to front line hospital workers. We are again delighted to be able to be the major partner to this year’s Northern Health Foundation Raffle, by providing a fabulous Toyota Corolla Hybrid.”

By purchasing a ticket, you can feel proud of supporting the important work of Northern Health.
Click here to purchase your tickets today and support us!

If you buy five tickets in one transaction, you will go in the running to win a $500 Coles/Myer Gift Card! If you purchase your tickets before Wednesday 23 September 2020, you will also enter our Early Bird Draw to win a $500 Coles/Myer Gift Card.

Featured Image (left to right): Dr Soleiman Kashkooli, Head of IBD Unit and Charys Winter, IBD Clinical Nurse Consultant

Today marks the 50th anniversary of Dr Ian Brand AM, joining the Preston and Northcote Community Hospital (PANCH), as Executive Director.

Dr. Brand was also Chairman of the Committee of Management of the Bundoora Extended Care Centre (BECC – known as Bundoora Centre) from 1987-90 and in 1992 the Ian Brand Nursing Home was opened, named in recognition of his work for the Centre.

Besides being a Fellow of the Australian Society of Certified Practising Accountants, Professor Brand has qualifications in Personnel Management, Education and Music. He is the only person to have received both the Sidney Sax Medal for excellence in health administration and the Gold Medal of the Australian College of Health Service Executives.

In 1983 he was honoured by the award of Membership of the Order of Australia, and in 2002 received the Centennial Medal. In April 1994, Professor Brand was awarded Honorary Citizenship of Jiangsu Province, China, the highest honour China can bestow on a foreigner, and the first time it has been given to an Australian. He has published more than 60 papers on hospital management and lectures and teaches widely in this area.

John Snowdon, Senior Lawyer at Northern, first worked with Dr Brand 40 years ago as an external legal adviser to PANCH. That relationship continued right through to the commissioning of the Northern Hospital. John remembers Dr Brand as an outstanding Chief Executive, and innovator, international statesman and a man who possessed amazing financial skills. Ian was both liked and respected by his staff, says John. “He treated them as people, not statistics.”

“Victoria owes a debt of gratitude to Ian Brand. He has devoted his working life to improving public health care for all of us,” says John.

Dr Brand answers our questions:

For those of us who were not around at that time, tell us what the role was that PANCH played in the northern community?

At the time, PANCH was the main hospital for the whole of the northern suburbs of Melbourne. We had the busiest Emergency Department, and the 50 bed Victorian Plastic Surgery Unit, which trained every plastic surgeon in Victoria. It became a model hospital for the Health Department, who used it to show overseas visitors interested in hospital management.

It is also ‘almost exactly 25 years since PANCH died a statutory death and the wonderful world of the Northern Hospital was created,’ says John Snowdon. What was it like to see the Northern ‘evolve’ from PANCH?

I was chair of the Committee that built the Northern. All our medical staff transferred, and it was great being able to work in a brand new specially designed hospital. We were told by the Health Department that it would take six months to fill up, but we opened on a Monday and had to go on ambulance bypass on the Friday as we were full! 

Tell us of your time at Bundoora Centre.

I was put on the first Committee of BECC as we couldn’t get an auditor unless there was a proper accountant to do the books, and I was the only accountant around. We built BECC on time and a little below budget. I was treasurer for the whole time it had a Board, except for the three years I was Chair of the Board, and I was pleased to agree to the name, Ian Brand Nursing Home.

You have many ‘firsts’ against your name – including being the first non-pharmacist to receive the Fred J Boyd Award, from the Society of Hospital Pharmacists of Australia. How does a non-pharmacist get the highest honour the Society has to offer?

While I was Medical Supervisor at Geelong, my chief pharmacist asked me to set up a training program for hospital pharmacists, which I did. I was on their Board of Censors for 32 years, and Chair of the Board for 13 years. I taught and examined every Fellow of the Society, and they made me an Honorary Fellow and Member, and eventually awarded me the Boyd.

Between your roles as an administrator and an educator, which role do you prefer?

I enjoyed teaching as much as doing the administrative work, but most I enjoyed investigative work. I led the first accreditation teams for every state except Victoria, and did many hospital and system reviews. I did investigative work for every Minister for 20 years, which was endlessly interesting, and for 14 months was the administrator of Fairfield Hospital. Happiness is being a one man Board of Management!

Lastly, tell us about your portrait in our featured picture above?

The portrait was painted by Sir William Alexander Dargie, CBE, eight time Archibald Prize winner.

While working at the Austin Health, I noticed a painting of their Board Chair in the board room. It was by Sir William, so I made enquiries to find he wouldn’t paint you unless you met with him and had a chat. So I visited and he agreed to paint my portrait. I asked what to call him, and he said “Bill”, so I did. While sitting, he spoke about some famous people he had painted, and it was a fascinating experience. He asked how I would like to look, and I said “slightly mischievous”.  Hence the painting.

Seven nurses at our Neurology department have been enrolled in the STEP (Supported Transition to Excellence in Practice) program, the first time ever for the Neurology department. The STEP program is a way of helping the team enhance their nursing skills, capabilities and understanding across the variety of disciplines.

“It’s the first time we are running the STEP program in Neurology. This is a very exciting time for neurology and stroke because once the new ward is open, will have new capabilities in terms of two EEG (electroencephalogram) monitoring rooms, where we will be able to get much more timely information about people’s epilepsy and related conditions.  It will also have a high dependency unit for stroke,” explains A/Prof Doug Crompton, Head of Neurology.

The program started in March and the team has four days of tutorials and group learning and one day of clinical work.

“That is where the team gets to see how we do our ward based and emergency assessments- we have more than a 100 code stroke emergencies every month. The STEP learners will get involved in that as well and see how code stroke emergency assessments happen,” he explained.

In addition to this, the nurses have individual patient projects to do and they are able to upskill in some of the assessments currently not done by nursing staff, whilst learning about the National Institute of Health’s Stroke Scale assessments, which helps identify deterioration or improvement in stroke patients.

“The idea for the STEP program came because we wanted to enhance people’s skills, and also because we don’t have a long standing heritage in stroke and neurology nursing. The neurology department has grown enormously since 2012 and now we are one of the busiest departments within the medicine directorate, in terms of how many patients are admitted and discharged over a year,” A/Prof Crompton said.

Back in 2012 when he started at Northern Health, Neurology was only a consultative service and last year the department had around more than 1200 admissions and discharges across neurology and stroke.

“We have also enormously expanded our capability and have a lot of speciality services now – motor neurone disease service, Multiple Sclerosis (MS) clinic, epilepsy clinics, headache clinic, migraine botox clinic, neurophysiology clinics, EEG, movement disorders, and stroke prevention clinics,” he explained.

Regular upskilling within the neurology team in crucial to be able to tackle one of the biggest risks in stroke treatment – and that is undetected deterioration.

“A lot of stroke patients are vulnerable to deterioration after the first couple of days after the stroke, so having a very refined way of assessing that is ideal and that is included in the STEP program. The deterioration in those patients doesn’t show up in an ICU setting, only in a specific clinical assessment,” he explained.

Some of the nursing team enrolled into the STEP program shared their positive experience, adding the team have learned quite a lot about the neurological disorders that have been common on their ward.

Nadine Stowell, ANUM on the Neurology Ward said learning how to do spirometry is an excellent skill to have and she is hoping it will help the team detect deterioration with patients.

“Headache study day was also great, I learnt more about the headaches that I thought was even possible,” she explained.

 

 

 

Update 2 July 2020: Due to the current COVID-19 developments, Northern Health’s Hack Weekend has been postponed.

What the Hack? – Northern Health’s inaugural hack weekend 11-12 July is just two weeks away, with over 80 people already signed up for the event.

Over the last couple of weeks, our staff has been sending numerous ideas and problems they would like to see solved during the weekend.

Ed Savill, Operations Director, says the Hack Weekend will present four problems that our patients and clinicians face, that virtual healthcare may be part of the answer. The theme of the weekend is ‘Supporting Northern Health to re-imagine and transform healthcare, using digital solutions, in the new world’.

The Hack Weekend team has selected four ideas to be “hacked” over the weekend.

“The first problem we would be looking at in the maternity area, as the team would like to provide mums different information at appropriate stages of their pregnancy or even after giving birth. The second one is orthopaedics – musculoskeletal wellness platform, third one is Intensive Care Unit (ICU) – ‘Communication with families’ platform and the forth one is in the allied health space and working on how to better prepare patients for discharge,” explained Ariana Carrodus, Project Manager.

Nicole Carlon, Director of Operations Women’s and Children’s is coming to the hack weekend to support the team working on the maternity task and feels that hack weekend is a great opportunity to demonstrate your coding skills for a great cause.

“We are hoping to develop a Maternity smartphone application that has the potential to completely transform the way we deliver care. Not only will your skills help us to improve the way we deliver care to women and their babies, but the development of digital solutions that improve health outcomes is a great thing to have on your CV,” she said.

The maternity team is looking for innovative digital solutions that will enable pregnant women and new mothers to have access to information and assistance when they need it.

“Come and join us at Northern Health’s hack weekend and be part of the solution. It’s time to move from reactive care of the sick to proactive healthcare that promotes wellness. This is particularly important in Maternity care. Innovative digital solutions can help us do just that,” she said.

Northern Health staff is invited to come to the weekend – you can be a facilitator and help run the event, or help with the tech/digital/design solution if that is your thing or be there to provide feedback on how the proposed tech solutions will work on the ground.

Please click here to find out more on how you can participate and register.

To find out more information about ideas to be hacked over the hack weekend, please click here.

Please spread the word to your colleagues and tech-friends and see you at the hack weekend.

Number of people on-site at NCHER is limited and all physical distancing measures will be implemented to ensure the event is Covid-safe.

 

 

Physical distancing is a key part of the global clinical response to the COVID-19 pandemic. At Northern Health, it is very important that all of us, as health care workers, follow the distancing guidelines when moving around our campuses and in the cafés and set an example for our community.

Dr Kirin Channa is an Emergency Department (ED) physician and is part of the leadership team, also about to take on the ED Quality Lead role. She feels our staff needs to maintain physical distancing and set an example for our patients, as well as colleagues.

“As medical workers, we are at higher risk so we need to keep our distance. I understand that it can be quite challenging in ED, especially in a resus room where we need to have five or six staff members in the room, but we have our masks on and our PPE in those situations,” she said.

Kirin adds that physical distancing behaviour is a complete mindset shift and can be really hard for people.

“We’ve been doing this distancing for a couple of months now, so hopefully we are getting more used to it. This is both an exciting and challenging job and many of us use our down time to connect with people. We are all used to a hug or a handshake, so we all need to think about how to have that connection while maintaining the distance,” she said.

Kirin says examples of staying connected but physically distanced include going for walks with friends, and playing board games around the table while keeping the distance.

“Our ED staff understand the physical distancing and respect the guidelines. We are also implementing different strategies to allow everyone to have a break and use tea rooms while maintaining 1.5 metre distance,” she explained.

Penelope Grellet, Director – Trust, Diversity and Engagement, encourages all staff to maintain 1.5 metres between themselves and colleagues at all times.

“We understand that these rules can feel awkward, but as clinicians and health care workers, we expect that you will adhere to the very clear, simple guidelines that will have a true impact on controlling the spread of the virus. A reminder particularly for teams when rounding through high risk areas, such as ED and ICU, to please limit the number of staff entering these areas to essential staff only,” she said.

Featured image (left to right): Dr Deirdre O’Mahony, ED Registrar and Dr Kirin Channa

‘Life doesn’t come with a manual, it comes with a Mother.’

Parneet Kaur is a ward clerk, who joined us only in March this year and has already been working on the frontline at both our Asymptomatic and Fever Clinic. It helps that she often has her mum, Jatinder working alongside her.

Jatinder has been working at Northern Health for three years, first as a Personal Service Assistant (PSA) and now as a ward clerk, who proudly takes credit for Parneet, a final year student of International Business Studies, working at Northern Health.

“Obviously with a mum working in health care I got more insights into the workings of a hospital,” says Parneet. “Now I really love it! I was doing some work in theatre recently and I thought you know what, this is nice!”

When asked how it is to work in the Fever Clinic, both mum and daughter describe it as “rewarding.”

Says Parneet, “I know we are only doing the paper work, but the patients come to us after being triaged and often they are anxious and it is up to us to comfort them.”

“I find it really rewarding to be able to help people especially in the current situation. Patients are appreciative of what we are doing. They understand the challenges of our eight hour shift,” adds Parneet.

“It is also not as daunting as it looks. When everyone is wearing their Personal Protection Equipment (PPE) it looks very intimidating but once you understand the process and how it works, it is not as daunting.”

“The staff are very supportive. The team members are very nice – doctors, nurses and PSA’s helping each other and  happy to give you a hand. The team work and camaraderie is special.”

“If it’s your first time – you will never feel out of place. They welcome you and soon you feel like you have been here for ages!”

“Northern Health is our second home – if this home needs something we need to help them,” says Jatinder.

“According to my religion, we have to help the community. As our gurudwara’s (temples) are closed, I feel like working in the Fever Clinic is like going to the temple – because I’m doing something for the community.”

Adds Jatinder, “I love Australia. This country has given me a lot of opportunities and as an Australian, I’m happy to help. This is the time to stand with the community and I’m proud I get an opportunity to do so.”

Featured image shows Parneet and mum Jatinder

Last year we welcomed graduate nurse, Lauren Parkinson, to Northern Health. Since then, she has been exposed to many opportunities that have helped her transition into a registered nurse. We caught up with her to find out what she loved most about her graduate year and her next career STEPs.

Nursing is something Lauren has always wanted to do from a young age. After being accepted into the graduate nursing program at Northern Health, she was placed on a rotation in the emergency department (ED) and on Ward 4.

Lauren says one of the highlights of her graduate year was working in ED – where we treat more patients than any other emergency department in the state.

“The clinical support team here in ED were awesome – I learnt so much from them,” she said.

“My rotation on the ward was really good as well because I could consolidate things I learnt as an undergraduate student. One of the other highlights was going back to the ward after being in ED as I felt a lot more confident,” she added.

Lauren tells us the clinical support teams made a significant impact on her experience.

“The clinical staff and education teams have influenced my career pathway in a huge way. Especially the emergency clinical staff – they are so supportive and I go to them with questions all the time and they always point me in the right direction and are very encouraging,” she said.

Lauren already aspires to complete her postgraduate qualification next year at Northern Health. In preparation for her further studies, she applied for the Emergency Supported Transition to Excellence in Practice (STEP) program.

“Since my grad year, I came back to emergency and started my STEP program in January, which is a six month program, so I’m about to finish that which I’ve loved,” she said.

“Next year, I plan on completing my postgraduate in emergency services. Hopefully I can even start it at the end of this month by doing a subject early once I finish my STEP program,” she added.

The Emergency STEP program prepares staff for advanced practice in the emergency specialty and is an introduction to a career pathway into postgraduate studies in this field.

It enhances basic competence practice in complex patient assessment, management and holistic health care for emergency patients. Staff undertaking the program benefit from face to face study days, simulations, case study reflection and bedside teaching and assessment.

“The STEP program has been a really good taster as to what you can expect in the postgraduate program, and introduces you to all of the concepts you are going to have to consider. It gives you a bit of a head start and makes you start thinking about things,” Lauren said.

Lauren says the education team were very helpful and supportive during her STEP program, especially as the program was completed during the COVID-19 pandemic.

“You also take on a bit of a leadership role with the STEP program – especially when you have new staff come in. Now I have graduates and students so it’s quite a big adjustment but I really enjoy it.”

Lauren doesn’t see herself moving on from Northern Health anytime soon and she encourages aspiring nurses to consider applying for a graduate program here for the family-like environment and opportunities for career development and further studies.

“After I finish my postgrad, I will continue working in ED. I love it here and want to stay. Maybe down the track, I would consider doing a trauma course or maybe some rural nursing but I love the team here and love the education so I can’t see myself leaving!” she said.

“I would also definitely encourage people to do a STEP program if you have the opportunity and if you get a chance to rotate through ED, do it! When you’ve got people supporting you, it’s a lot better. I think because we work together all the time, it’s a bit like a second family here so it’s really nice.”

To find out how Northern Health can support your career in nursing and midwifery, please click here.