Published on 21 July 2022

I am sure you are all well aware of the pressures on our current services with the increasing number of COVID hospitalisations.

Western Health’s senior leadership team are acutely aware of the workloads on all of our clinical and many of our non-clinical staff and we are implementing a range of initiatives to try to alleviate the pressure as far as possible.

Use of Nebulisers

A reminder that nebulisers are a high infectious risk aerosol generating device that should be avoided in order to protect staff and patients. Spacers are generally equally effective for most patients.

Telehealth

We are monitoring the use of telehealth and will continue to plan for any necessary expansion of this approach, in consultation with relevant clinical  staff.

Keeping Safe at Work

We are continually reviewing our COVID safe guidelines in order to keep staff, visitors, volunteers, students and patients safe. Current recommendations are as follows:

Meetings should be conducted via virtual means unless they are related to direct patient care (for example handover, case conference etc). Masks should be worn at all times and there should be no eating or drinking during face to face meetings.

Mandatory training and other skills based training can continue to be conducted in person. Masks should be worn at all times and there should be no eating or drinking during sessions. Other education and training should be delivered online where feasible. Additionally, consideration could be given to delaying any significant training events.

With continued high rates of COVID in the community and consistent with the Department of Health advice, we encourage staff to discuss with their manager, the feasibility of working remotely where practical.

There is no change to cross campus travel guidance and staff are able to continue to cross campus as required

Visitors

We are aware that visitor compliance with wearing of N95 masks continues to be a challenge and therefore to improve compliance visitors will now be provided with KF94 masks. These will be provided via security at entry points and we are confident that this more comfortable and high quality alternative will lead to much higher compliance with mask wearing. Implementation of this approach will occur over the next 48 hours and remain in place during the Winter period.

Other measures to support staff

On a daily basis we are seeking more and more ways to provide relief to staff, even with small measures. As part of this, we have arranged a coffee booth to be open between 11.30pm and 2.30am at Sunshine Hospital, opposite the pharmacy. Measures to support other sites are also being considered.

This is far from an easy time for all staff here at Western Health. Currently we are providing care for more than 90 COVID positive patients whilst our colleagues may also be unwell and unable to attend work.

Thank you for the phenomenal work you continue to do in support of our patients and each other.

Regards

John
Executive Director Operations (Acting)