Staff News

Community and Oral Health
Staff Update

I joined the COH performance management meeting within hours of returning to COH and was privileged to hear a wonderful story of a patient from Interim Care.

National Reconciliation Week is held annually from 27th May – 3rd June. National Reconciliation Week provides all Australians with an opportunity to learn about our cultures, shared histories and achievements, ...

The staff awards and celebrations continued this week with our Length of Service Awards at Brighton and local Shining Star Awards at Aspley Community Health Centre.

The staff awards and celebrations continued this week with our Length of Service Awards at Brighton and local Shining Star Awards at Aspley Community Health Centre.

This morning I was realty excited to be notified that next week Metro North Clinical Governance will be undertaking a Peer Review in Community and Oral Health (COH).

What an amazing few days across Community and Oral Health with our Administration Professionals Day and International Nurses Day awards!

I want to focus on our administration heroes across Community and Oral Health (COH) this week as they play a fundamental role in supporting our patient and resident services.

For my first day acting in the Executive Director role I am very excited to share with you some of the great pictures from the grand opening of the Gannet ...

The months of May and June are always a busy period for celebrations, acknowledgements and events. This year is no different, with many activities coming up including our Nursing, Length ...

This week I visited the Caboolture Dental Clinic at the Satellite Hospital. I was extremely impressed by how happy and welcoming the team were.

What a great week to travel around to see as many teams and staff as possible and get the opportunity to say thank you for so much inspirational work.

Easter is important to me personally as it reminds me of second chances to do better, to be better. No matter what your belief system is, it is easy to ...

Today, Thursday 21st March 2024 marks National Close the Gap Day. A day to show support in achieving Indigenous health equality by 2032. The day has been acknowledged on the ...

While Glynis has been acting in the Chief Operating Officer role in Metro North, I had the pleasure of attending the COH launch of the Metro North Disability Services Action ...

I have been wanting to sing from the rafters about this wonderful initiative for sometime now.

I always enjoy showcasing and emphasising the wonderful contributions of our staff and teams across our directorate.

Any challenge we face is an opportunity to see how many great people we have across our directorate. I have seen so many extraordinary people in COH and I am ...

Tuesday 13 February marks the 16th anniversary National Apology to the Stolen Generations by then Prime Minister Kevin Rudd. In 2008, Prime Minister Rudd made the formal apology on behalf ...

For me, there is no greater privilege than hearing about our services making a difference to patients’ lives.

It’s been an exciting start to the year for Community and Oral Health. I’ve had the pleasure of getting on the road and visiting our various community facilities and hearing ...

Welcome back to many of you. I hope that you got a good relaxing break if you had the chance to over December and January.

With only a couple more sleeps until the festive break I want to again thank everyone for another amazing year.

This week we saw some important milestones to cap off another great year.

It is good to be back after another holiday overseas and I can’t speak highly enough of taking some time to get away and relax – although in saying that ...

With Glynis returning next week I just want to pass on my thanks and gratitude to everyone who has supported me over the past few weeks. It has been an ...

It’s official! Community and Oral Health has been fully accredited for the next 12 months by the Australian Council of Health Care Standards.

As I have been advised that some staff did not see my previous message, I am happy to welcome Jayne Stevenson to the role of Senior Director Clinical Operations (Community), ...

Thank you for the way in which services have responded to Metro North moving to Tier 1 in our Acute Respiratory Plan, and for how you have responded to the ...

The accreditation process last week reflected positively on all of our services and the accreditors spoke highly of the cleanliness and maintenance of facilities as well as the compassionate patient ...

It is great to be back after a short but refreshing break. A big thank you to Dr Mario de Silva who looked after the directorate while I was away, ...

I want to thank everyone for their support and efforts while I acted in the Executive Director role over the past few weeks.

I had the great pleasure of attending the Community and Oral Health Innovation Showcase yesterday to see first hand some of the great work that our teams are doing.

I am on leave from today for the next few weeks, but while I am away Dr Mario de Silva will be acting Executive Director until Monday 30 October. During ...

Over the last few days we began our roadshow to acknowledge and celebrate our 2023 Community and Oral Health Staff Excellence Awards winners.

It is time to get serious and talk about the amazing services, teams and individuals that we have across Community and Oral Health. And, for some reason I keep on ...

While there has been a slight delay in my message last week this just means there is more to highlight. Following the school holidays, we will be kicking off our ...

Following on from last week’s announcement about the impressive number of nominations for the 2023 Community and Oral Health Staff Excellence Awards, I want to share some more positive stories.

I was amazed by the number of nominations we received for the 2023 Community and Oral Health Staff Excellence Awards.

What a wonderful week it has been thanks to a number of great events I had the pleasure of attending. This included the opening of the new cinema at Cooinda ...

With the Ekka over for another year, I wanted to highlight the Flu Vaccination Clinic at the show. This came together with staff working across logistics, planning and equipment, vaccination ...

This week, our Executive Leadership team received feedback from the recent Metro North Have your Say staff survey via Jacqui Parle from BPA Analytics.

In 2023, we are taking some very important and exciting steps to prepare Home Hospital services for future demand and sustainability.

Today, we welcomed our first oral health patient to the new Caboolture Dental Clinic which is located at the Caboolture Satellite Hospital. Phillipa is a regular patient at Caboolture and ...

I am very appreciative of the way our staff continue to keep on responding to the needs of Metro North hospitals and the complex and changing needs of our patients.

Please join me and members of the the Community and Oral Health executive as we celebrate our monthly Shining Star Award recipients at North Lakes Health Precinct on Tuesday 25 ...

Great news! We have opened the nomination process for the Community and Oral Health Staff Excellence Awards for 2023.

Community and Oral Health has had a lot to celebrate recently with the NAIDOC celebrations last week. There has also been music, coffee and a cooked breakfast for the tradies!

Staff within the Home Hospital service will be aware of the Home Hospital Review that was undertaken earlier this year to provide advice and recommendations on how we can align ...

For this week’s message I would like to focus on NAIDOC Week and the many celebrations that have been occurring across our facilities.

Another great week and another opportunity to share some wonderful examples of the compassion shown by our inspirational staff.

It is always a good day when I can share some of the great stories and happenings across our directorate, and today there is a lot to share.

Following on from my message last week I wanted to continue the conversation about the short notice assessments against the eight National Safety and Quality Health Service (NSQHS) Standards.

From July 1, short notice assessments with ACHS, can occur at any time when Community and Oral Health will be assessed against the eight National Safety and Quality Health Service ...

Tomorrow it’s Crazysocks4docs Day! It is a day where we think about mental health and the impacts on our health care workers.

Today, we continued our executive visits to Community and Oral Health facilities at Chermside Community Health Centre, and it was nice to spend some time with the team and enjoy ...

I have had the absolute pleasure over recent weeks of joining team huddles and last week joined the Community Palliative Care team at North Lakes.

Every day, working alongside such fabulous nurses across Community and Oral Health, I am truly proud and so privileged to be your Professional Lead.

The month of May has provided us with an opportunity to celebrate our incredible administrative staff, midwives and nurses.

Last week we celebrated the diversity and immense contributions of our administrative professionals throughout Community and Oral Health (including information sessions and professional development opportunities throughout the week).

While we have experienced a few short weeks where many of us have had the opportunity to take a break, there are still some great things happening across our amazing ...

We continued our executive visits to Community and Oral Health facilities this week at Sandgate Dental Clinic, and we were very appreciative of the warm welcome we received from the ...

It is always a pleasure to see our staff being very passionate about the care and support that they provide to our patients and residents, but also when they are ...

It is great to be back after a short and refreshing break spent with my family. Thank you to Mario de Silva for covering the Executive Director position while I ...

It’s been another rewarding week in the hot seat and as always there are a few things I would like to share.

This week, I had the pleasure of catching up with staff as part of the Brighton Health Campus Shining Star Awards and our regular executive roadshow.

Each week seems to get busier and busier across our service and I am always appreciative of the valuable work you do.

We continue to find new and innovative ways to improve the patient and resident experience.

I really enjoy sharing some of the great work that is going on across our directorate and taking the time to visit our facilities and talking to our staff as ...

We continued our executive visits to Community and Oral Health facilities this week at Aspley Community Health Centre.

On Monday, we recognised the 15-year anniversary of the National Apology to the Stolen Generations (by then Prime Minister Kevin Rudd) at Brighton Health Campus.

This week we officially welcomed Marianne Horne as the new Business Manager following similar roles at Redcliffe Hospital and in Metro South.

As we move into February, I am very optimistic about and looking forward to the year ahead. Across our directorate there is a lot of work underway to look at ...

I am always looking for new ways to improve the way we deliver care and at the same time build ways to compassionately support our patients and residents, their families, ...

As I reflect on another very significant and rewarding year, I want to thank everyone for their continued efforts and dedication.

It was clearly a night of nights, a great celebration of our dedicated staff and teams across the health service.

I want to send a shout out to Aus Hmud, Belinda Sawtell, Paul Drahm and Kerri Gane who all successfully completed the Metro North Health Executive Leadership Program this week

I want to send a shout out to Aus Hmud, Belinda Sawtell, Paul Drahm and Kerri Gane who all successfully completed the Metro North Health Executive Leadership Program this week

While our Community and Oral Health Staff Excellence Award roadshow is now complete, it was great this week to see so many of our staff recognised as finalists in the ...

It has been another challenging week, but one mixed with some great highlights.

The past month has seen some great activities and achievements across our directorate as we focus more on business as usual activity.

We hosted another Community and Oral Health Staff Excellence Awards event today and I joined the team at the Oral Health Centre to acknowledge some great staff.

At our executive this week we discussed a very important message – “It’s okay to be you!”

This week’s message is one of reflection. On Saturday as the Executive on Call, I had the opportunity to speak with a man whose father is in one of our ...

Around a hundred staff from across Community and Oral Health and Metro North participated in the Compassion Labs hosted by Mary Freer this week. It was great that we were ...

We definitely don’t want them to give up their day jobs as it is clear that COH’s Data and Reporting team are very good at what they do – capturing ...

It was a privilege to host the Metro North Health Board at Nundah this week and I am grateful to the Nundah staff for their hospitality and assistance.

As I prepared the Community and Oral Healthy papers for the Metro North Board meeting to be hosted at Nundah on the 27 September 2022, I felt immensely proud of ...

Community and Oral Health was proud to host two enjoyable and significant events yesterday. I joined the Elders, executive and staff in the Brighton Auditorium for the Metro North Health ...

There has been a clear difference in the focus of the directorate over the past month as the pressure of COVID-19 subsides and we re-focus our efforts.

I have mentioned in a previous message about Community and Oral Health being at the forefront of Green Metro North initiatives with the rollout of Solar Photovoltaic (PV) systems at ...

It is the first day of spring and we are thankfully seeing a reduction in pressure on our services due to a decrease in COVID-19 cases. This provides us with ...

As Metro North Health is starting to focus on getting back to business it is a good time to be mindful of what this means for Community and Oral Health. ...

I am thrilled to announce the nominees for the 2022 Community and Oral Health Staff Excellence Awards.

I am thrilled to announce the nominees for the 2022 Community and Oral Health Staff Excellence Awards.

It is encouraging to see that we are again back in Tier 2 of our COVID and Influenza Response Plan and experiencing a reduction in active cases and staff being ...

There are many teams and individuals across our service who are unsung heroes who don’t get the accolades that they deserve. As part of National Stroke Week, I want to ...

As we manage COVID-19 patients in our bedded services or move about the community when transmission rates remain high, its important that we remember to keep ourselves, our families and ...

Thank you for all your efforts over the past couple of weeks as we near the peak of the current COVID-19 wave. It feels like we are again in a ...

Our Metro North Oral Health Service has been under a lot of pressure recently and has experienced many challenges due to COVID-19 over the past few years.

COH is a gift that keeps giving! Each day I get to work with amazing individuals and see tremendous cooperation in the interest of providing great services.

It’s great to be back in COH after a brief break with family in the bush – there’s nothing quite like looking up to a blaze of stars across an ...

Thank you for your support as I acted in the Executive Director role over the past week. You will be pleased to know that Glynis Shultz will be back on ...

NAIDOC Week (3 – 10 July 2022) celebrations are held across Australia to celebrate and recognise the history, culture and achievements of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples.

It has been a little while since the last Executive Director message and I would like to highlight a few important things. We are again in a very busy ...

The enhancement of our Post Acute Care Service is an important milestone for the directorate and reflective of the demand for accessible and compassionate care that supports the needs of ...

There is plenty to update you about following a week filled with changes and some great celebrations and announcements.

Reflect about your EXCELLENT colleagues and nominate today!

You would have seen the message from the Metro North Health Incident Controller late yesterday which mentions the relaxation of some visitor restrictions.

Next week, we celebrate National Reconciliation Week 2022 which is themed: “Be Brave. Make Change.”

The month of April saw some significant developments with the final vaccine delivered as part of the directorate’s role in the COVID-19 response. Our teams have delivered more than 412,000 COVID-19 ...

The Community and Oral Health Reconciliation Action Plan (COH RAP) Working Group pays our Acknowledgement and respect to the Traditional Owners and Custodians of the lands on which we work.

It is great to be back after a wonderful wedding celebration with my family. I want to thank Michelle Kane for her work looking after the directorate while I was ...

It is very important that we spend some time acknowledging our nurses for their inspirational work caring for our most vulnerable. At Community and Oral Health our diverse services are ...

To start, I want to thank everyone who has rolled up their sleeves to receive the flu jab. As you would know we have already started to move into a ...

Administrative Professional Day is celebrated worldwide to acknowledge our devoted administration staff and to simply say thank you.

We have a lot to talk about this week and lot of great things coming up in the next few weeks and month worth highlighting.

Thanks to Michelle Stute for covering for me while I had a few days leave with my family. I also want to acknowledge the team on call with me ...

Thank you for your support over the past week as I have acted in the Executive Director position while Glynis is taking some well-earned rest.

As we approach the Easter break, I have reflected on the fact that although we may follow different faiths and spiritual paths, we are joined to together by a shared ...

We had some great candidates nominated for the April monthly Shining Star Awards last month. As you know all of our monthly winners will automatically be nominated for the annual Shining ...

There is so much happening at the moment, I just wanted to add a few more important acknowledgements this week. Every day, I am reminded by your efforts that I am ...

We are facing a lot of pressure at the moment collectively across our service, with staff unable to come to work due to COVID-19 or being close contacts, and our ...

To look back over the past few years and reflect on the achievements of staff during trying times, we can see how far we have come as a directorate.

As you have seen from yesterday’s message we have again moved to Tier 3 due to the increase in the number of staff who are away from the workplace due ...

Next week is Harmony Week (21-27March 22), which celebrates Australia’s cultural diversity.

I always enjoy sharing some of the positive stories and innovations being delivered by our great teams and staff.

There is a lot of discussion, conversations and activity occurring around our work towards Health Equity. As a directorate, we are committed to providing equity of access to high quality ...

We have been planning for more severe weather over the next 24 hours which may have potential for impact on our home visiting and broader services due to potential road ...

Metro North Health is introducing a new electronic referrals system called Smart Referrals Workflow Solution (SRWS) which will go live on Monday 21 March 2022. This new system replaces CRU use ...

As I mentioned yesterday, it never surprises me that when we have to manage an emergency or issue, Community and Oral Health staff are ready to respond to whatever is ...

Many of you stood up remarkably over the last few days – Thank you!

There has been a lot of movement forward for the directorate over the past week. The BPA survey gave us a lot of meaningful actions and things to think about, ...

It was great to hear about the appointment of Jackie Hanson to the Metro North Health Chief Executive position. Jackie has always been a firm supporter of the important work we ...

Staff wellbeing and connection is crucial to our health and resilience at work at any time and it is more important during these challenging times. As we continue to work through ...

I am delighted to see so many staff being nominated each month for the Monthly Shining Star award. It is important that we take the time to reflect on how ...

I am delighted to see so many staff being nominated each month for the Monthly Shining Star award. It is important that we take the time to reflect on how ...

Last year we saw close to 2,400 years of service and 200 staff who have reached an important length of service milestone in their careers. Reaching the milestone of 10,15, ...

As we begin another week, a word that keeps coming to mind is ‘endurance’. This is a term we need to focus on as we head into the third ...

I always acknowledge credit when and where credit is due. This week I have a number of areas and staff I would like to thank given the current pressures and ...

As we head into the midweek I want to continue to thank everyone who is working hard across our services and through the public holiday. I hope that many of ...

When I reflect on the past few months there are too many people across our directorate who I could list here and acknowledge for their outstanding work and commitment. As ...

Today I would like to address the important topic of fit testing. Fit testing is an essential practice in keeping everyone safe so it is imperative that all staff are ...

The past few weeks have been both challenging and extremely rewarding. Challenging because we adapted and responded to the changes in Tiers in the COVID-19 response plan and are now ...