Jane Hancock, A/Chief Operating Officer

The past few months across Metro North we have seen a huge amount of activity. In my few weeks with the Hospital and Health Service, I have witnessed the whole organisation pull together to fill the gaps, keep things moving and care for each other and our patients.

In my discussions with staff and our daily incident management team meetings, there are frank conversations about the amount of work happening and this is informing our decisions around the COVID tiers. Our move to Tier 4 was not taken lightly, but it has enabled us to take actions which are paying off in our ability to continue meeting demand with reduced staffing.

In the past few days we have moved tiers and temporarily postponed planned care, opened new wards to relieve pressure, and deployed as many staff to frontline work as possible. Yesterday we sent an SMS to nursing and midwifery staff to see if anyone is interested in picking up some additional shifts over the long weekend, which has had a great response from part time and casual staff. We have also contracted private mental health services for patients where this is clinically appropriate. With four short weeks ahead of us, we will continue to monitor and review our response measures daily.

I understand it takes a lot of work to modify services and to turn planned care on and off. I recognise that it’s not only our clinical teams, but also our administration and support teams. I want to thank all of our frontline and frontline support staff for your work in this space at short notice.

In that spirit, I hope that people have some downtime even though you may be working or on call over the break. It is absolutely my favourite time of year in south east Queensland! So, whether you are celebrating Easter, Passover, Guru, or spending time and enjoying this with family and friends enjoy it when you can and rest, reconnect with land, water, air and renew.