Dear colleagues,

Yesterday was RUOK? Day and it was great to see so many staff in their yellow shirts celebrating the day. The past 18 months have been a challenge for us as healthcare workers and as individuals as our society and our work life has changed significantly in response to the pandemic. Although we recognise RUOK? Day as a standalone day, the key message is that every day is a good day to check in with your colleagues and friends to see how they’re going and to let people know if you’re not going well yourself. Across Metro North we have a range of options to seek support or to help provide support (see Mark’s message below).

The Have your Say staff survey results have been distributed to managers across the HHS so they can review and start working on action plans. Your manager may already have met with your team to share the results. Next Thursday Mark Butterworth and I will be holding a vidcast to share the overall Metro North results. If you have any questions, you can ask them in the chat. The vidcast link will be sent closer to the day. The recording will be available afterwards if you can’t watch live. I will also be visiting teams across the HHS over the next six weeks. If you would specifically like me to come and chat with your team, please let me know.

This week we stood up a mass vaccination clinic at Brisbane Entertainment Centre in Boondall. We saw about 1000 people through on the first day and will be ramping up to 3000 per day in the next few weeks. Once vaccine supply is more constant, we have the capacity to vaccinate 6000 people per day through the clinic. To staff the new clinic, we have closed the hospital vaccination clinics at STARS, TPCH and Redcliffe. Staff can still get vaccinated at RBWH or at any of our community clinics at Boondall, Doomben, Caboolture or Kippa-Ring. Thank you to the all the staff involved in setting up and running the vaccination clinics.

Vaccination is our best way through the pandemic. If you haven’t yet had your first dose, I strongly encourage you to get your vaccination as soon as possible to protect yourself, your colleagues and your loved ones. In recent months we’ve been reminded of how quickly COVID can spread and the Delta variant has challenged our understanding of who is at risk. We are fortunate that Queensland has not experienced the same level of community outbreaks as southern states. It’s vitally important that we as healthcare workers do our part to reduce the risk of COVID transmission in the community and in our workplaces.

Today is Professor Brett Emmerson’s final day with Metro North as Executive Director Mental Health. I want to thank Brett for his passionate commitment to the wellbeing of patients and staff and his advocacy for improving access to mental health services for our community.

Regards,

Jackie