2 April 2020

Dear Colleagues

I hope this week so far has been kind to you. Things continue to move fast and it’s essential that we take care of ourselves and each other. We are all in this together and our values, in particular those of respect, teamwork and compassion are needed at home, with our patients, and with our colleagues.

Here’s an update on what’s been happening in the past 24 hours:

• PPE and 3D printing
• Virtual Care
• Thanks to our Switchboard operators
• IUIH fever clinic
• How to help – donate blood and join the ‘Care Army’

PPE and 3D printing

Some excellent news on the PPE front! Yesterday we put the call out through our Metro North Facebook page for the community to help us 3D print 3000 face shields in three weeks. This work is being coordinated by our Herston Biofabrication Institute team in conjunction with some of their partners.

The response has been astounding. Almost 100,000 people have already seen the post and hundreds of people accepted the challenge and fired up their printers. It’s wonderful to see our community embracing this innovative solution to sourcing personal protective equipment. If you’ve got a 3D printer and want to help, you can find the specs here.

Virtual Care

As we move from traditional ways of delivering care including telehealth (usual care delivered via a video screen) to virtual care we are creating new ways of working and the real time exchange of clinical information. The ultimate objective for virtual health is for the technology to be available to clinicians in any location using any device.

With visitor restrictions in place across our facilities, we are also encouraging patients and their loved ones have virtual visits. It’s important we support our staff in learning new ways of working with this technology. Staff are encouraged to access online resources that are supported by Metro North and eHealth for virtual care and working remotely. To register for training click on the ‘training and support’ link under the new Digital Resources section on the COVID-19 page.

Thanks to our Switchboard operators

I’d like to make special mention of our amazing Switchboard teams across Metro North who have been fielding a huge number of calls from concerned patients, family members and members of our community. Fortunately, with the amount of information available publicly now the number of calls is currently settling slightly. Our Switch teams are often the first point of contact people have with our health service and their professionalism has been greatly appreciated.

IUIH Fever Clinic

Our colleagues at the Institute of Urban Indigenous Health (IUIH) will next week open a dedicated fever clinic for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people at Caboolture. The clinic is being set up with the assistance of Metro North clinicians, and patients will be referred directly from the Moreton Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Community Health Services (Moreton ATSICHS) clinics.

How to help

The community is rallying behind us as we face this challenge, and many of our staff are also looking at additional ways to help. The key messages remain good hand hygiene, covering coughs and sneezes, and observing social distancing requirements! Simple words, but sometimes hard to ‘maintain the rage’. I encourage you to keep looking for ways to make it fun for each other.

If you are healthy and haven’t been recently overseas, or been confirmed with or in close contact with someone with confirmed COVID-19, please consider donating blood or plasma. In addition to emergency blood use, many of our patients and people in our community rely on regular blood products for treatment. There is no evidence that coronavirus is transmissible through blood transfusion. Remember, you can’t donate blood while you’re sick, even with mild respiratory infection symptoms. Visit the Red Cross Life Blood site for more information.

The Premier has also launched a campaign this week called the Care Army, calling for volunteers to help support seniors and people most at risk during the pandemic. Volunteers are needed to help with collecting groceries and medication and generally checking in on older people who are isolated. You can sign up online here.

Take care of yourselves.

Regards,

Dr Liz Rushbrook
Metro North Health Incident Controller

Metro North HHS – Overview of Cases*

*With effect 1000 2 April 2020
**Metro North has one recorded death