Dear colleagues,

This week I’ve had the opportunity to meet with staff at Brighton Health Campus and at our Kippa Ring vaccination clinic. I was very disappointed to hear that the staff at Kippa Ring have experienced abuse and disrespectful behaviour from people attending the clinic.

I would also like to mention our Switchboard teams who have been dealing with an enormous volume of calls since the pandemic started. Sometimes we forget that they are also on the frontline of the COVID-19 response, as the first point of call for hundreds of people each day calling our facilities with questions. Many of these people are anxious and unfortunately more than a few are abusive. Thank you to all our Switch staff for your work and continued commitment to providing excellent service.

I have been reading the approximately 3500 Messages in a Bottle I’ve received from the Have your Say staff survey. One of the key themes that has emerged is staff experiencing concerning behaviour from visitors and patients. We have been working for several years to reduce violence and abuse against staff and there are support mechanisms in place, but we are sadly still seeing bad behaviour. We will continue to work to make everywhere in Metro North as safe as possible for staff. I am pleased to see that our Protective Services Ambassador program at RBWH is seeing good results in reducing and deescalating incidents.

You may be curious as to when you as managers will receive your BPA survey reports. Dissemination will commence Monday 30 August across Metro North and will be completed by Friday 3 September. Next week Metro North leadership will complete reading the reports. David and I will be visiting across Metro North over the next three months. I want to reassure staff that there is no identifying information in the reports and any feedback you provided is anonymous. We will be providing support to managers to ensure action plans are developed to address feedback and communicate with staff.

We are continuing to monitor the evolving COVID-19 situation interstate, particularly in New South Wales. We have received various requests for support and are working through them to see what we can offer while maintaining our own services. It’s in our interests to provide support to manage the outbreak and hopefully avoid a similar situation in Queensland.

Our vaccination program is going well. This week RBWH achieved the milestone of 50,000 doses administered. We are looking to increase capacity at the Caboolture Square community vaccination clinic and also at ways to provide more access for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people to get vaccinated.

On Monday I’ll be visiting Redcliffe Hospital and chatting with staff in the courtyard. I’m looking forward to getting out and seeing more of you now that restrictions have lifted. I will be visiting our facilities, but if your team or unit would like a visit, please contact me at CE_MNHS@health.qld.gov.au to arrange a time.

Regards,

Jackie