Louise Oriti, Executive Director, Redcliffe Hospital

Thank you all for your hard work and support of our health services at this time.

Yesterday, our Minister for Health and Queensland’s Chief Health Officer presented their daily press conference here at Redcliffe Hospital. While at our campus, they took the opportunity to visit both the Emergency Department and the Intensive Care Unit (wearing the appropriate PPE). They used this time to check in with our senior clinicians and get some valuable on the ground feedback on how services are working and supporting COVID activity.

Our Fever Clinic continues to run 8am to 4pm daily. We are seeing volumes of presentations starting to change. Decreased activity is now being reported with the introduction of rapid antigen testing, and we are amending our staffing levels within the clinic to align with this change. Moving forward, we will continue to monitor and respond to demand as required.

As we continue to experience complex clinical situations, it has been very clear how important clinically-led decisions are for our hospital. We already have strong clinically-led governance, and we will be increasing this with a focus on clinical risk and planning sessions each week with our clinical services. These discussions will ensure we continue to provide the safest service and environment for our patients, staff and families/carers.

We remain on Tier 4 of our COVID-19 response and continue to work with the Metro North Incident Controller to ensure we align to all requirements. We have two COVID wards currently (located in the Rehabilitation and Palliative Care buildings), and our planning is ready for a third ward, should that be required.

We have recently been experiencing increased general activity at the same time as COVID activity and have been able to remain at safe levels with good management and flow of our patients. During these periods, we need to continue to plan for the future, for possible surges, but also for possible reductions and how we can respond.

Our Emergency Department team are busy finalising their Tier 4 and 5 plans, and there will be more focus areas as we respond to the changing environment. With this we still remain in a position of reduced levels of planned care as advised by our A/Chief Executive Jackie Hanson.

Fit testing continues to be one of our biggest priorities and we need to ensure all of our staff are fit tested for two masks. All service areas are currently checking that our current reported compliance levels are correct and working with staff to ensure we are as safe as we possibly can be.

And lastly, as we heard from Grant Carey-Ide, our Safety and Quality Director at a COVID-19 Update this week – we recently received some extremely positive feedback from a COVID patient’s family. The family wished to thank staff at Redcliffe Hospital, particularly those within the COVID ward and supporting services, for the high level of compassion shown to them during this time. The family felt everyone worked seamlessly for the patient and really listened to the family to ensure the best support was provided.

It was great to hear how all of the hard work and working together provides such a positive reaction from our community.

We listen to understand, and we’re stronger when we work together. #IamRedcliffe

Louise Oriti
Executive Director
Redcliffe Hospital