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For many patients, faith can have an integral role in their healing and wellbeing during their hospital stay. 🙏❤️‍🩹

TPCH Senior Chaplain Judy coordinates pastoral care services for patients that nominate a denomination when they are admitted to hospital, supporting a wide range of religions.

"We receive lists of patients via their admissions denomination and also via phone referrals, and then our volunteers like Eugene [pictured] will make their way through their list for the day, visiting their patients," Judy said.

"We see people when they`ve often had a life changing diagnosis, this is a heart and chest hospital after all, and the patients call the shots. We have many patients that might come down from the flying doctor service, so they have no one to talk to until their families arrive sometime days later.

"You don`t even have to be religious to want to see a chaplain, we ask them how we can help, sometimes that is end of life prayers or sometimes it is just for a chat."

#ShoutoutSaturday to Judy, Eugene, and all of our chaplains and volunteers across Metro North. You can find out more about our spiritual support services available at Metro North at the link in our bio. ...

For those living in rural Queensland, seeing the doctor may take several days or months. This can be especially difficult with a condition such as Inflammatory Bowel Disease (IBD), which is the reality for over 800 Queenslanders living regionally under the care of the RBWH IBD team.

RBWH Gastroenterology specialists Associate Professor Gareth and Dr George Tambakis have developed a project in which rural IBD patients can access a point of care stool test - similar to a rapid Covid-19 test - that produces test results in just 20 minutes and sends these results back to the team in Brisbane for review.

"Not only is it helping is to deliver care more easily to rural Queensland but it also empowers those patients who if they feel like they have active disease or are worried, they can get an instant result, which allows us to accurately measure their disease and give them the best treatment," Gareth explains.

"We have taken the concept of telehealth and elevated it to the modern standard, so integrating apps, electronic medical records and real time feedback, which allows us to bridge the gap and even the playing field for those who live furthest away from care," Dr Tambakis adds.

In the next three months, the team will review the key outcomes of the study with the hope of making it available further.

For more information on accessing Virtual Care options, click the link in our bio. ...

Are you an Ear, Nose and Throat expert looking for your next opportunity? Then we are all ears to hear from you! 👂👃

Dr Steph is an Otolaryngologist, more commonly known as a Head and Neck surgeon, and she specialises in skull base surgery, helping patients across both RBWH and STARS.

"I do a combination of outpatients and surgery, however the facilities differ in that STARS is quite high volume, we see a lot of patients each day that might have waited a long time for their treatment and we are doing a lot more common procedures there," Dr Steph explains.

"Whereas the RBWH, we are doing more complex surgery cases, a lot of big head and neck surgery cases for cancer and there is a lot of collegiality between various teams, for instance today we did the first half of this surgery, and then the neurosurgeons come through for the second half."

"The thing with ENT that I love is that at the beginning of the day you might be operating on something under a microscope, doing a procedure with really fine work and then by the end of the day you might be doing a big head and neck operation, it`s the variety."

If you are an outstanding ENT Consultant like Steph, then there is an opportunity at Metro North with your name on it. Click the link in our bio and apply today. #WorkforusWednesday ...