Louise O’Riordan
A/Executive Director
Redcliffe Hospital

Redcliffe Hospital and Metro North Health have stepped up to Tier 2 of our Acute Respiratory Illness Response Plan due to the increase in COVID-19 and other acute respiratory illnesses among patients, staff, and our wider community.

For staff at Redcliffe Hospital, in practical terms, the change means:

• When providing clinical care, staff are strongly encouraged to wear surgical masks, and those caring for patients with a suspected/confirmed acute respiratory illness follow the PPE matrix.
• Staff are asked to avoid crowded tearooms and indoor break areas in favour of outdoor spaces.
• We’ll continue to offer surgical masks to patients and visitors at hospital entrances.
• Meetings should be moved to Teams. All participants must wear surgical masks for any meetings that can’t be on Teams.
• Training should be moved to Teams. Essential/mandatory training may continue face-to-face, but participants must wear a surgical mask.
• There are no changes to visitor access to the hospital or planned care.

If you’re unwell, do not come to work. If you become unwell at work, let your line manager know and go home. If you test positive for COVID-19, let your line manager know, and do not come to work for at least five days following either the onset of your symptoms or when you test positive (whichever is earlier).

If you have any questions, please talk to your line manager or Infection Control.

Heatwave response

With the weather and high temperatures having eased, we’ve now stood down our heatwave response.
Thank you to everyone involved in those preparations, Facility Services and Metro North Communications in particular.

It’s a good reminder that during the summer months, we should expect severe weather events that can interrupt patient care and our lives in general.

When things like that are happening, Metro North provides staff with information through the Emergency and Disaster Response Extranet. You can also find out more about how to prepare yourself and your family from Get Ready Queensland. Local governments also provide good information – if you live in the City of Moreton Bay or Brisbane City, both have free severe weather alerts you can sign up for.

Infrastructure update

Next year, we can expect a lot more infrastructure and building works in many parts of the hospital, including:

• Works for the new clinical services building and Redcliffe Hospital Expansion, with some impacts on staff and consumer car parking.
• Essential maintenance of the hospital’s ventilation system, with a rolling program of works starting in January with the Rehabilitation Unit.
• An upgrade to the nurse call system in wards not yet on the new system.
• Upgrading the electricals and IT in areas that need it ahead of the rollout of ieMR.
• Improvements to air handling and zoning (HVAC) in Ward 6 East that will give us even more flexibility when it comes to bed management.

To help make sure that these works are well coordinated with clinical areas, we’ll be returning to our regular Infrastructure Forums. These forums will be on Teams every second Wednesday.

NUMs and clinical leaders already have these sessions in their Outlook calendars from next February. If you’d like to be invited too, please click here.

Christmas Decoration Competition

Each year, our Christmas decoration competition does a great job of helping make the experience of patients and visitors to our hospital a more merry one during the Christmas season.

This year’s competition theme was “favourite Christmas movie” and the judges visited all ten competing areas yesterday.

Congratulations to this year’s winner, Nursing Education, with their entry “Polar Express”. Well done also to Ward 5 East for their second place entry, “Polar Express”, and to Kidney Health Services for their “Polar Express”, which was given third place. The judges awarded a Highly Commended to Engineering for their “Elf” entry and to West Block for their “Memory Lane” inspired display.

Thank you again to everyone who took the time to arrange and put up these displays; it’s clear a lot of thought and effort went into them.

Christmas decorations can remain in place until the start of January. If decorations are to be used again, clean them before storing them. Infection Control can advise on what decorations are appropriate to be kept and what should be thrown out.

It’s been a big year, and it was great to catch up with a lot of people at the Christmas Morning Tea on Wednesday.

On behalf of everyone at Redcliffe Hospital, thank you to everyone working on Christmas Day to provide and support patient care.

Redcliffe Hospital never closes its doors. Every hour of every day, patients are cared for by nursing, midwifery, surgical, medical, allied health, security, administration, and operational staff. Christmas Day is no exception.

For those taking some time away from the hospital, I hope you enjoy your well-earned break.

Merry Christmas.

Louise.