09 April 2020 – COVID-19 (coronavirus)

Dear Colleagues,

Firstly, I hope you are all well and coping through the current COVID-19 climate. As always, Metro North continues to mature to meet the ever-changing environment of the pandemic response. While this challenge is one we are more than prepared for, your wellbeing is front of mind for me which is why today, I am proud to launch our strategy for staff wellbeing through COVID-19.

Staff wellbeing strategy during COVID-19

Day to day wellbeing is something we all need to do for ourselves but it’s also important that we are providing essential wellbeing support for you during this period of increased anxiety and change.

We have appointed wellbeing expert Bruce Sullivan as our temporary Chief Wellbeing Officer to oversee implementation of our wellbeing strategy to support staff during COVID-19. Bruce is a developmental speaker with extensive experience in wellbeing and has provided support to other complex organisations.

Our wellbeing strategy to support staff during COVID-19 builds on our existing resources and tools including free confidential support for all staff through Benestar and our online wellbeing hub.

One of the important new components is a network of staff Peer Responders skilled in psychological first aid who will be available to support your wellbeing. They will listen and link you with appropriate support services or resources and will become integral to how we take care of ourselves. Caboolture Hospital has had a peer responder program for a while, so we’ve seen how successful the model is in providing care and support for colleagues. If you’re interested in volunteering or know someone who would make a great Peer Responder, please visit our wellbeing site for the expression of interest information.

Another vital pillar is creating a network for collegiate support. Staying connected is incredibly important in a challenging time. We’re offering staff training through RUOK? To give you the confidence to ask your colleagues if they’re ok and to know how to appropriately respond if they are not. Initial training will be through the Learning Management System and will take about 90 minutes. There will be a regular refresher and support for our RUOKers.

We are also building a special program called PPE4URMIND which will offer tailored onsite counselling for any staff whose emotional and mental wellbeing is at risk due to their work in response to COVID-19. This program will start in May. We are currently recruiting temporary staff psychologists to deliver this care.

Happy Easter!

It’s hard to believe we have already reached the Easter long weekend! I would like to make a point of reminding everyone that though it is Easter, we still need to be staying at home to support Queensland’s effort to flatten to curve and decrease the spread of COVID-19. I hope that we are all able to have some downtime to spend with our immediate family. For those required to be at work over the long weekend, enjoy Easter with your colleagues and thank you for your commitment.

PPE Updates

Our call out to the community has been a great success, having reached our target of printing 3000 face shields in 3 weeks. Can you believe we achieved this in a week! The public are still hard at work printing and we are still accepting the face shields. If you know someone in the community who has taken up our 3D printing challenge, please thank them on behalf of Metro North for their contribution to our response.

While we are talking PPE, we have developed a Metro North Procedure on PPE use during COVID-19. I encourage staff to familiarise themselves with this guideline to ensure appropriate levels of PPE are being used correctly.

Virtual Care Update

Our virtual care initiatives are evolving rapidly and every day I am impressed by what we are achieving in this space. I’d like to acknowledge the huge amount of work that has gone into this initiative that ensures we are able to continue care for our outpatients, care in the home of mild COVID-19 patients and ensuring our inpatients are able to keep contact with their families who are not able to visit with our visitor restrictions in place. More information on our virtual care can be found on the Metro North Virtual Care page.

Communicating with you

This week has seen another 3 successful Vidcasts with a fourth going ahead this afternoon with Col Smyth from HR at 2:30pm. Thank you to Jackie Hanson (who joined me on Monday), Catherine Watson (Infection Control Nurse), Paul Chapman (Infectious Diseases Specialist) and Col Smyth (HR Manager) for taking time to answer COVID-19 questions from hundreds of staff this week. Remember, if you’re unable to join the sessions live you can watch the recordings online at any time.

Below is the communications schedule for the upcoming week:

This week’s COVID-19 staff newsletter can also be found online.

Ned and I adopted a rescue kitten late last year and we named him Simon. There are funny black and white videos on the internet called ‘Simon’s cat’. Our Simon (the cat not the owner) wakes up early each morning and puts his paw on Ned’s face then quickly lies down again to look innocent. He keeps doing this until Ned finally gets out of bed and feeds him. He has an older brother Truffle and specialises in sneak attacking him. He will jump on Truffle and put him in a headlock, lick his face then run away, obviously an exciting kitten game.

It makes me think back to my older brother and I living on our parents’ farm. A great deal of time was spent leaving booby traps for each other. One of my favourites was to disconnect the brakes on one side of the tractor so that every time he braked, he would turn in a circle. To me it was very hilarious, however occasionally our booby traps would get our father who did not have a sense of humour. You have got to love siblings and the fun/torment we inflict on each other!

Have a happy and safe Easter either with your immediate family or your work family. Thank you for your ongoing commitment to Metro North as a service and to our response to COVID-19.

Regards,

Shaun