A word from Paul

Dear Colleagues

The last six months have been a peculiar time. On one level, we turned the page on a new year with optimistic expectations, but also knew this year would bring many challenges.

We all want things to go back to ‘normal’ and to not have to endure any more lockdowns, restrictions or deferred holidays. However, we are unfortunately not out of the woods yet, so we must be patient.

Let’s stay prepared and stay safe. Let’s also be kind to each other, kind to vulnerable people in our community, and most importantly kind to ourselves – don’t forget that on an airplane, the safety video reminds you to get oxygen for yourself first!

We also need to stay optimistic, for the sake of our own mental health, but also for the health of your family, community and patients.

This year we have seen the advent of the COVID-19 vaccine, and doctors have responded tremendously to our vaccine program but as Marion wisely reminds us, this is but one part of our armamentarium – we still need to remain vigilant with infection prevention and public health practices. I thank you for bearing with us with regards to changing vaccine guidelines.

Please stay home and get tested if unwell, practice strict hand hygiene and wear PPE as prescribed, even if it is annoying – this could be the difference between someone contracting a deadly virus or sending hundreds of your colleagues home. I know this can be a burden, however we can lead by example as we have these last 18 months

I also want to share some insights from a book I recently read called ‘What Philosophy can teach us about being a Better Leader’ by Alison Reynolds et al. In addition to recommending this great book for anyone interested in philosophy or leadership, it also provokes great discussion in staff engagement, empowerment and the essence of leadership.

One great quote calls all leaders to ‘create an environment in which empowered people can flourish’. This is a call for all of us – doctors in formal leadership roles, informal ones, registrars, anyone managing someone, to take heed of these wise words. This is what we should aim for, and I’m always available to hear how we can continue to maintain this environment.

I’m always humbled by our staff’s commitment to Western Health and our community. We would not be able to perform our roles as executives if it wasn’t for our passionate, engaged and wonderful staff.

Thank you for your commitment to Western Health and always striving to deliver Best Care to our community.

COVID-19 and Public Health Unit

Our COVID-19 microsite https://coronavirus.wh.org.au continues to be our primary source of information where you can access a wide range of information from the latest PPE guidelines, clinical guidelines, org-wide bulletins and many other resources.

A reminder that instructional videos, the ‘COVID-19 Testing Criteria, Risk Categorisation, De-isolation and Cohorting Guideline’ and the ‘EMR Quick Reference Guide’ are also available on the coronavirus site in Clinical Guidelines/COVID-19 Patient Management

If you’re ever unsure about testing, cohorting or de-isolating suspected or confirmed COVID-19 patients, review this page first or contact the De-isolation HMO on 8395 9048 (or through Switchboard 8345 6666).

For any queries involving yourself or your staff’s isolation or testing, email the staff hotline on whscovid-19staffclinicenquiries@wh.org.au or let me know if the query is more complex.

Many of you won’t be aware of the exceptional work our Western Public Health Unit are doing, especially during the latest out break. Our ‘WePHU’ have been leading the charge for contact tracing and management of many hundreds of contacts, spanning from the outer western region to the city.

Dr Finn Romanes along with Kate Cranwell, and their great team, have been keeping us and our community safe without much fanfare.

For more links to lots of Western Health media coverage during the pandemic, please click on this here and for some excellent podcasts from Russell Harrison, Dr Marion Kainer and other clinicians please click here.

Doctor Wellbeing and Support

On Friday 4 June, we hosted the Crazy Socks 4 Docs Day which aims to raise awareness for the mental health of doctors and all health professionals. We had a fantastic display of crazy socks on the day, and most importantly staff enjoyed a discussion about mental health and a distraction from COVID-19.

The founder of this day, Dr Geoff Toogood, inspired us many years ago to break down the taboo of mental health by talking about it.

It is okay to not be okay – and creating a safe space to discuss issues is the very first step to seek help when needed. I like many of us, experienced difficult times when I was a junior and if it wasn’t for speaking up and trusting colleagues, I wouldn’t have received those essential supports. We all need support from time to time so once again, let’s lead by example.

Our Wellbeing and Support page on the COVID-19 site as a great hub with the ‘Looking after yourself’ and ‘Accessing Personal and Professional Support’ pages of particular importance.

Our EAP service, through Caraniche, is a confidential 24hr service and can be access through web bookings www.caraniche.com.au email work@caraniche.com.au or through their 24hr phone service 1800 099 444.

Doctors are always encouraged to contact the Victorian Doctors Health Program on 9280 8712 or at vdhp@vdhp.org.au for a 9-5pm M-F service and/or AMA Victoria’s Peer Support Service on 1300 853 338.

If you experience or witness behaviour that is unacceptable and should be resolved, please don’t hesitate to use our EMPOWIR program. Either reach out to a contact officer through this link or email pwic@wh.org.au which goes to a ‘vault’ that only one senior staff member sees.

Western Health Doctor News and Achievements

Doctor News

Many of you know that Professor Helen O’Connell has resigned from her formal position as Director of Surgery and Head of Urology, but Helen is certainly still around in an honorary capacity. Helen’s long and distinguished career speaks for itself, however I want to acknowledge Helen’s Officer of the Order of Australia Honours at the 2021 Australia Day for ‘distinguished service to medical education, and to medicine, in the field of urology, as an academic and clinician, and to professional groups’.

This is a very well-deserved and high honour. Helen is also keeping busy as the Chair for the 2021 International Continence Society meeting in Melbourne. We wish Helen all the very best in this exciting new phase of her career. Professor Niall Corcoran joins us as the new Head of Urology with an impressive career in academia and clinical excellence.

Professor Graeme Maguire also leaves us after over three years of dedicated service as Head of General Medicine. Graeme will be taking up the position of Deputy Dean of Medicine at Curtin University in WA. Curtin will provide Graeme with new challenges and the opportunity to continue his clinical and research interests in remote and Aboriginal health. We want to thank Graeme for his exemplary leadership, advocacy for the highest standards in patient care, and engagement at many levels of the organisation. A recruitment process is underway for Graeme’s replacement. We wish Graeme well for his trip to the far West!

Associate Professor Christine Rodda has decided to step down as Paediatric Endocrinologist at Western Health, although her University role as Academic Lead for the MD research projects (MDRP/MDRS) will continue. Her clinical role will be taken over by Paediatric Endocrinologist Dr Kim Lit Chin. In addition to her clinical role, Christine has held various role within the Western Clinical School and helped establish a monthly Young Adult Diabetes Service and a Paediatric Endocrinology clinic, which now runs weekly with fellow paediatric endocrinologist Dr Danielle Longmore. We thank Christine for her many years of service.

Dr Katerina Politis has joined us as our new Registrar in Medical Leadership and Management and Royal Australasian College of Medical Administrators (RACMA) trainee. Katerina has not only been a junior doctor at Western Health, but is also a Footscray resident so knows the lay of the land and community well. Katerina will support Birinder and the Chief Medical Office in a broad range of portfolios.

Research News

This year we have also been quite successful with several grants achieved from the Medical Research Future Fund (MRFF) both through our collaboration with The University of Melbourne. One is for $1.2M for the Pomerium Trial (Protecting Aged Care Residents from the Pandemic via Specialised Nutritional Supplementation) through our Australian Institute of Muscoloskeletal Science (AIMSS) and its director, Professor Gustavo Duque, who is our Chair of Medicine and one of our geriatricians.

The second MRFF grant was awarded from Professor Thomas Marwick, one of our cardiologists, along with A/Professor Nicholas Cox (Head of Unit, Cardiology) and Professor Graeme Maguire (Head of Unit, General Medicine) as associate investigators. This grant is for $2.5M to investigate the use of cardio-protective therapy to manage persistent cardiovascular effects of COVID-19: Pathway to recognition and treatment of sub-clinical disease.

Some may also know that Nick Cox is a spokesperson for the Heart Foundation and recently helped produce a video (with media presence at Sunshine Hospital) to launch the ‘Smoking causes sticky blood campaign. Learn more and watch the video here.

A more recent effort from MRFF is through a collaboration with the University of Sydney for a $2.3M grant for the Safer medicines To reduce falls and fractures for OsteoPorosis (#STOP) Study. Our AIMSS researchers will be directly involved as either Chief Investigators or supporting personnel. This study will review the medications of consumers with osteoporosis who have sustained a fall or a fracture.

Another exciting collaboration through Victoria University has culminated in the ‘Waitlist Project’ or Improving Care for Patients on a Waiting List for Orthopaedic Specialist Public Health Services in Melbourne’s West’. This project has been awarded a $2M grant from the Department of Education and Training with A/Prof Phong Tran (Head of Orthopaedic Surgery) as the main driver behind this collaboration. This will be a multi-disciplinary study and has already had a lot of involvement from Mary De Gori (Physiotherapy), Julia Firth (Specialist Clinics) and Bill Karanatsios (Office for Research).

Academic News

One of our registrars in Paediatric ED and Paediatrics from last year, Dr Jared Gursanscky, received a national award at the RACP Congress for the ‘Clean Wee’ study with several familiar Western Health clinicians listed as co-authors This is on the back of Jared winning the RCH Trainee Research Award last year for this project.

Congratulations to Dr Rob Baker (ED registrar) who has been awarded the Al Spilman Early Career Research Grant from the ACEM Foundation. Rob, together with registrar colleague Dr Stephanie Ng and supervisors Dr Kesh Khulllar and Professor Anne-Maree Kelly, will be conducting a research project comparing rigid versus soft neck collars for alert ED patients requiring a CT scan to rule out a cervical spine injury. Over about 6 months, they will be collecting data on about 320 patients attending the Sunshine or Footscray EDs. Results are expected late 2021.

One of our Oncologists, Dr Shehara Mendis recently completed a Master of Cancer Sciences through the University of Melbourne and achieved dux for the course and the top monograph awards. In addition to the working in one of the busiest Oncology units in the state, Shehara obviously dedicated herself to achieving this fantastic result.

Dr Devaang (Dev) Kevat, who is one of our endocrinologists and was a champion for Telehealth during the peak of the pandemic. Dev also holds a Law degree and has an interest in ethics. Dev and colleagues wrote about the medicolegal implications of telehealth in the JMA here.

Dr Shirley Wong was a co-author on the ‘CLEAR’ trial for renal carcinoma, which has now been published in the prestigious New England Journal of Medicine. Thanks to Shirley from Oncology, as well as the whole oncology research team for their hard work on this important study.

One of our ED registrars, Dr Chase Schultz-Swarthfigure, along with Professor Anne-Maree Kelly, published on whether consent for the use of health information for research is acceptable to emergency department patients. This article was published in Emergency Medicine Australasia and can be viewed here.

A/Professor Tissa Wijeratne, Head of Neurology, was recently appointed Editor in Chief for Neurology International, a journal with a global presence which started in 2009. Tissa also recently published on the ‘Post-COVID 19 Neurological Syndrome: a novel syndrome with challenges for the global neurology community’ in the Journal of Neurological Sciences.

In other exciting news, 26 of our candidates recently achieved 96% on the RACP clincial exam. This is the highest pass rate we have ever achieved at Western Health amid the tumultuous year. In addition, our general surgery trainees have also done exceptionally well amid the recent conditions, to achieve a 67% pass rate from a total of six candidates, on a very tough exam.

Other News

Dr Andy Tagg, Adult and Paediatric ED physician, was recently invited to the inaugural Safer Care Victoria Advisory Group, for the Wellbeing Hub. For those who know Andy, no doubt you wil agree that there is no better person to sit on this important group and be an ambassador for Western Health.

The personal isolation or ‘McMonty’ hood was co-invented by Western Health and the University of Melbourne last year, with A/Professor Forbes McGain (Anaesthetists and Intensivist) as the primary lead. The McMonty hood has recently been made available to Papua New Guinea, the Republic of Nauru and other states across Australia. For more information on this innovation, visit their new website.

For other news, please visit our western health doctors website which will soon contain new content. If you have any more news related to education and training, email the Medical Education Unit at meu@wh.org.au and look out for the excellent MEU newsletters that are released monthly to all medical staff.

Other Western Health Updates

To avoid duplication, in this section I will just reinforce key updates given I will send relevant updates for these items as they become available.

The formal amalgamation of Western Health with Djerriwarrh Health Service has been announced by the Minister and will go into effect from Thursday 1 July. This is an exciting time for the broader western region, and a time to join as a new network to deliver Best Care to an even more diverse and engaged community. An interim transition plan and structure will be put into place. Follow this link for more info.

Phase 2.1 of our five-year EMR project is now well underway with the current state validation taking place in May with over 120 very engaging workshops. In late June and July, the Design, Build and Validate process will take place where the Cerner team will look to our staff for the future state design. Visit this site for Phase 2 within the broader Digital Health microsite or contact Dr Oliver Daly (Acting Chief Medical Informatics Officer) at oliver.daly@wh.org.au for any queries.

Yet another exciting project for Western Health is our New Footscray Hospital (NFH). The design development phase is now underway with approximately 30 user groups to guide the design across clinical areas and services. If you drive past the NFH site on the corner of Ballarat and Geelong Road, you’ll see the ditch is getting deeper with lots of activity, which is exciting. For more info on where we’re up to, visit the NFH microsite or contact our NFH Medical Lead, Dr David Bramley at david.bramley@wh.org.au

Our inaugural Specialist Certificate in Clinical Leadership was held from February 2021 and concluded after six face-to-face modules with world-expert facilitators from the University of Melbourne. For this customised course, 35 Western Health medical leaders attended the CHRE auditorium at Sunshine Hospital. The feedback so far has been incredibly positive, with participants primarily enjoying the opportunity to network with other Western Health medical peers. Please contact me if you are interested in applying for the 2022 course which will be advertised shortly.

The Office for Research, through the leadership of Bill Karanatsios (Director) and A/Professor Harin Karunajeewa (Director of Clinical Research) have drafted the 2021-2026 Western Health Research Strategic Plan. This is an ambitious plan which aims to better co-ordinate research at Western Health and focus on our People, our Partners and our Data – key pillars in achieving research excellence. Please contact Harin at harin.karunajeewa@wh.org.au if you are interested in being involved.

Another great collaboration through the University of Melbourne culminated in the Innovation Acceleration Program (IAP) which in late 2020 offered up to $100,000 in funding for ‘problems’ that Western Health staff brought to the IAP team, then pair up with University of Melbourne researchers/ scientists. On Wed 7 July from 12-1pm we will announce two winners from 2020 (hint: blood loss monitor + reusable respirator) then launch the 2022 IAP. Log onto the zoom webinar through this link.

Most doctors have hopefully heard of myBeepr – our secure clinical communications application. myBeepr has the Western Health active directory uploaded, can take photos, direct dial thus skip switchboard and send secure messages. There are now more than 1,300 users, more than 1.3 million messages read with more than 500 care team groups created. Our nursing colleagues are soon to be added, which is an exciting development. If you have yet to join, please follow onelink.to/mybeepr use WH as the hospital code then login using WHCN\yourWHusername.

We have established the GP Education Hub via our new WeLearn platform. GPs can now access the hub to view all previously recorded GP education webinars that have been hosted by Western Health as well as Grand Rounds. We hope to expand on this hub to include any resources that are of interest to GPs. If anyone is interested in presenting to our very engaged GPs at our monthly webinar, please contact Jillian at jillian.head@wh.org.au

The Western Health sustainability team now have their own online newsletter called Eco Vision. We have always been home to very engaged staff in the topic of sustainability and through this newsletter, you’ll hear about all our new developments and teams. View the May edition here. You can also find older versions on this intranet site.

AHPRA News and Clinical Communiques

Follow this link to see the June update of the AHPRA newsletter which contains important information about advertising guidelines for doctors and interesting facts from AHPRA’s annual report. All doctors can subscribe to the monthly newsletter.

I also encourage you to read the ‘Clinical Communiques’ as seen here. Within this site, you can find the Clinical, Residential Aged Care and Future Leaders. These publications are brought to you by Monash University, VIFM, the Victorian Managed Insurance Authority (VMIA) and the Department of Health.

Thank you

I hope you’ve enjoyed reading this newsletter and most importantly, remember to remain optimistic, stay safe and be kind to each other and especially to yourselves.

Cheers

Paul

Dr Paul Eleftheriou
Chief Medical Officer

Western Health
Gordon Street, Footscray VIC 3011
Mob 0413 090 734

Tel 03 8345 6420
Email: paul.eleftheriou@wh.org.au
Web: www.westernhealth.org.au