July 2021
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Dealing with pain in a pandemic
Here’s a timely story for Pain Week. It is a story of persistence in the face of a pandemic. It concerns our Pain Entry Program (PEP), part of our Persistent Pain Service, a group based, face to face program that was the entry point to the pain service for clients. When COVID-19 put such group gatherings at risk, it had to quickly evolve into becoming TelePEP, offering a combination of online and telephone-based services. However, it wasn’t without its challenges as Sarah Slater, Pain Service Coordinator, explains. “In order to participate in TelePEP, clients were contacted to determine if they…
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Associate Professor Lisa Hui awarded grant for Outstanding Women
Associate Professor Lisa Hui has been awarded the Melbourne Medical School’s Strategic Grants for Outstanding Women. She is the second recipient along with Dr Leonie Griffiths from the Department of Medical Education, Melbourne Medical School and Northern Health – a double honour for Northern Health. The Melbourne Medical School’s Strategic Grants for Outstanding Women, offered biennially, is designed to assist high-performing, early to mid-career women in academia, negotiate some of the challenges faced as they pursue career progression towards senior academic and leadership roles. The Melbourne Medical School’s Strategic Grants for Outstanding Women, offered biennially, is designed to assist high-performing,…
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World Hepatitis Day: Hep can’t wait
On July 28 each year, World Hepatitis Day brings the world together to raise awareness of viral hepatitis and to influence real change. This year’s theme, ‘Hep can’t wait!’ highlights that, even in times of a global pandemic, people living with or at risk of viral hepatitis, should not delay their screening and management. Lyn McLean-Knight has been a hepatitis nurse at Northern Hospital since 2012. “You can be infected with hepatitis B or C for a long time without any symptoms or signs of cirrhosis. Cirrhosis is scarring of the liver which can lead to complications including an increased…
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Evoking the senses for our patients
Northern Health is fortunate to receive donations from many volunteers in our community who knit and crotchet items that are given to various departments across the health service. Fiddle-mitts are knitted cuffs or hand warmers which have different textures and materials attached, such as beads, ribbons and buttons, that people can hold and ‘twiddle’ with to help any restlessness or agitation that they might experience. One of our latest donations was from the Sunbury Library Monday Knitting Group. Their donation included a big bag of fiddle-mitts for patients at Northern Health. Rebecca Lyall, one of our nurses in Ward 19…
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It’s DonateLife Week
DonateLife Week encourages Australians to register as organ and tissue donors, and to have the conversation with their family and friends. Northern Health had the privilege of looking after seven patients and their families who very generously agreed to organ, eye and tissue donation in the last 12 months. The generosity of our Northern Health patients and families resulted in eight people on dialysis receiving kidney transplants, two people receiving life-saving double lung transplants, one person receiving a life-saving heart transplant, one person receiving a life-saving liver transplant and one person with diabetes receiving a pancreatic islet cell transplant. “Countless…
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Peter Brack on team sports, passports and interprofessional education
Peter Brack, Associate Director – Education, Allied Health and Interprofessional Programs, is a self-confessed introvert. As he admits it is, “a bit weird given a central theme of my career has been ‘collaboration’.” With a background in occupational therapy, Pete’s interest in Interprofessional Education (IPE) started over ten years ago when he was involved in two projects related to Interprofessional Education. One of those projects called the Interprofessional Practice Placement, was the first interprofessional training ward set-up in Australia, and was focused on interprofessional teams of students, working to provide care to patients on sub-acute wards at Northern Health. Pete…
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COVID-19 testing milestone!
Our COVID-19 testing clinics at Northern Hospital Epping and Craigieburn Centre have hit a significant milestone of 200,000 presentations through the clinics. Elisha O’Dowd, Acting Project Manager COVID-19 Clinics and Entry Screening, said the testing clinics opened in early March 2020 in response to the increasing demand for COVID-19 testing in our community, and since then, the program has evolved with the fluctuating needs of the pandemic. “This year, Craigieburn and Epping have been hit hard with multiple exposure sites in our local area, so they have each completed over 40,000 tests since January,” Elisha said. “We are very proud…
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New theatre recovery area opens
“I feel like I am at the 42 kilometre mark of a marathon, with only a few hundred metres to go!” Says Tracey Wyllie, Peri Operative Services Manager – Surgical Services. She is talking about the new theatre recovery area, which opened on Monday. Called the Post Anaesthetic Care Unit (PACU), the new theatre recovery area opened earlier this week as part of Stage 2 of the Northern Hospital Expansion Project. Tracey is excited as, “it enables us to deliver quality care in an environment that the team is really proud of and proud to work in.” The new unit…