06 April 2020 – COVID-19 (coronavirus)

Dear Colleagues,

We have created three temporary Directors of Clinical Operations positions to support our COVID-19 response. These positions will be based at Redcliffe Hospital, The Prince Charles Hospital and Caboolture Hospital and will support the Executive Directors to manage operations during the COVID-19 pandemic and recovery, and also ensuring our non-COVID-19 healthcare continues to be high quality.

Applications are open to all staff from all professions and streams in Metro North. Applications close at 4pm next Monday (Easter Monday, 13 April). Please see the role description for more information.

As is now a Monday tradition, below is a summary of last week’s COVID-19 response activities:

Preparedness initiatives last week

• Confirming ICU capacity and ventilator availability to create 149 beds.
• Identified 202 inpatient beds available for COVID-19 patients across Metro North.
• Virtual Ward capacity for up to 800 patients.
• Virtual ED preparation.
• Range of work across the health service to create ICU, ward and staffing capacity to care for anticipated COVID-19 patients.
• Non-critical surgery and procedures suspended until further notice.
• Category 1 urgent surgeries such as cancer-sensitive procedures continue Working with community aged care facilities to increase bed capacity by 1000.
• Working with private hospitals to discuss partnering opportunities to utilise capacity across sectors.
• Rolled out the statewide visitor policy across Metro North and implemented visitor restrictions and digital visitor arrangements.
• Managing accommodation requests for COVID-19 patients.
• Launched the reallocation survey for non-essential staff to be matched with opportunities to support our community and colleagues.
• Held a Metro North COVID-19 session for our consumers.

Our activity for the past week

• As at 3pm yesterday, we have had 290 confirmed people with COVID-19 in Metro North, of whom 140 have recovered.
• Created patient-facing COVID-19 webpages for the community to access information relevant to their local health facility including visitor restrictions.
• Assessment and testing through fever clinics brings the total to 8671 presentations in the Metro North region.

Looking after our people

Workforce hubs are being established locally and centrally throughout Metro North. These will be the key areas responsible for managing reallocation of staff to priority clinical are and management of our vulnerable workforce. In line with social distancing we continue to offer virtual staff training, as well as supporting flexible working arrangements where suitable. Also revised are our workforce FAQs and a new employment arrangements flowchart (under Fact Sheets leave) has been created to support staff.

To help keep staff healthy, we have purchased more than 16,000 flu vaccinations for our staff vaccination program, with frontline staff receiving vaccines as a priority.

There is a strong focus on staff wellbeing initiatives and tools including working on the COVID-19 Staff Wellbeing online hub being launched later this week. Our staff guidelines around staff support for those who are vulnerable has also been updated.

We are developing a fatigue self-assessment card which will attach along with your ID card to ensure adequate breaks are taken.

To keep you informed, we have held 5 VIDCASTs since launching the series last week. These are a great tool in keeping up with the latest and most up to date information. VIDCASTs will continue through the coming weeks.

Preparedness initiatives in the coming week

• PPE Advisory Group to refine PPE guidelines.
• Preparing for GP closures over Easter break.
• Working with our union partners to collaborate as a united front to address occupational violence.
• Continuing to support staff training in virtual work environment, including virtual training and tools for occupational violence.
• Supporting the Institute of Urban Indigenous Health (IUIH) to open a dedicated fever clinic for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people at Caboolture,   .,……   with patients to be referred directly from the Moreton Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Community Health Services (Moreton ATSICHS) clinics.
• Mobilising our Better Together Health Van with a focus on the health and wellbeing of our First Nations people.
• Finalising agreement with private hospital providers

Maximising our resources

Across Metro North there are a range of initiatives in place to assist in boosting our PPE supply chain, including identifying and ordering alternative sources of PPE. We have sourced additional face masks and gowns as well as preserving our existing PPE supplies. There has also been strong support from the community in response to our call for assistance in 3D printing 3000 face shield frames in three weeks.

Have a great week and remember as a health service we will get through this pandemic together.

Regards,

Shaun