Dear colleagues,

Today is my last day as the Chief Executive here at Metro North Health.

It is a great privilege to be part of the team here in the health service. I would like to thank you all for the hard work and dedication in delivering our care to the community of Queensland. Over this week I have put a great deal of thought on what I should include in my final message. In this instance I thought less is more.

People have often asked me what keeps me up at night as a CE. When we examine the future demand for healthcare and the reducing workforce as a percentage of the population, we are faced with significant challenges over the next 30 years. If we do not change our trajectory, we will need to go from producing 32 WAU per FTE today to 99 WAU per FTE in 2050. This will necessitate a focus on the future evolution of healthcare while dealing with the issues of today. If we do not keep planning for our future and our commitment to translational research and workforce development the challenges will not be met. To enable us to do this we need plans such as MN32, to continue working on our culture, and engaging all parts of the organisation. Your contribution to this is essential and I am sure you will carry that torch forward.

A significant part of our success is due to discretionary effort that you put into your roles. Our community can be very proud of what you do and the effort that you put into making this a better place. I am proud to be part of your leadership team. The organisation is left in good hands that will continue to support you and keep an eye to the future. When we reflect on the previous 18 months, Metro North has carried more than 50% of the state workload responding to COVID. The fact that we were able to do this while delivering a balanced budget and exceeding our activity target has only occurred through your amazing efforts and ability to pivot to new challenges every week. Thank you and, importantly, your families that often feel the consequence of what we put into our roles.

I decided to share two last funny stories with you from the life and times of Shaun. Like many of us our partners have a different perspective and approach to issues and life. One of the points of difference between Ned and I is the issue of emails. She accuses me of being OCD and checking my phone and reading emails obsessively. Many people can get a response from me at 2 or 4 in the morning. I have attached an image of Ned’s phone which shows she has 115,000 unopened emails. I shudder every time I look at her phone and have to resist the temptation to grab her phone and start opening them, however I calculated it would take more than 600 hours to open them all. She did ask me one time if I think she had missed something important! While we share a sense of humour, the love of cooking and cats, we will never agree on the approach to emails.

One rate limiting factor in going away is that Sam will feed the cats but he won’t clean the litter box. Ned bought automated litter boxes which you can operate from your smartphone. She’s setting them up this week and we’re going to trial them when we go away. It scoops up the poop and seals it in a package underneath the tray. I wanted to call them Apollo 13 and Challenger, but Ned is going to run with Pooper 1 and Pooper 2.

I will miss the team. You’ll no longer have me inflicting my sense of humour on you and Ned will appreciate me no longer sharing all her personal stories with everyone.

Regards,

Shaun