Amanda Sharpe
WITH 20 years of nursing experience across a broad range of acute nursing fields behind me in large regional centres and smaller rural facilities, I made the decision to come to Kerang as the Acting Unit Manager, to manage Acute Services whilst my predecessor takes a maternity leave period of absence. Kerang District Health came highly recommended to me by colleagues past and present and it has not disappointed.
The Urgent Care and Acute Ward were custom built to accommodate the broad needs of the community members requiring inpatient and outpatient acute care in the new hospital build, completed April 2016. The Ward is a new, spacious, clean, and beautifully furnished unit, fitted out with brand new, state of the art monitoring and equipment. Over the last 12 months, the Acute Ward provided care for 2256 outpatients in the Urgent Care Centre, and 1164 inpatients.
Medical services in the Acute Ward and Urgent Care Centre are largely provided by Medical staff from the two GP clinics that provide medical service to the area. The great benefit of this system, is that the majority of community members who require acute services are cared for by their own Doctor, providing a seamless process between prehospital, inpatient and post discharge care in the community.
There are significant differences in funding and structure between Urgent Care Centres and Emergency Departments, and for this reason it is important to understand that there is a cost incurred for consultation with a GP in the Urgent Care Centre which is on par with consultation with a GP at the clinic.
Kerang District Health has embraced two fantastic initiatives to ensure access to expert assessment and treatment, in times when on-call GP services are not readily available. The first is “My Emergency Doctor”, where a video link provides almost immediate access to an Emergency Medicine specialist, who along-side the nursing staff, remotely assess, prescribes emergent care and provide medical advice.
Kerang Acute Services are enormously fortunate to have executive leadership that embrace and actively support the expansion of expert nursing services. We currently have two Nurse Practitioners employed by the service, educated to Master’s Degree level these are experienced expert nursing staff who can independently assess, prescribe medicines and therapies and initiate investigations for both inpatient and outpatients. Three Rural and Isolated Practice Registered Nurses are also endorsed to independently and expertly assess and supply medicines for presenting outpatients. This provides expedient expert care to the presenting consumers.
What has impressed me most about Acute Services, is their genuine care, support and absolute commitment consumer led care. A professional, enthusiastic, caring and skilled workforce working together to provide the appropriate surveillance and care needed to reach the goals of whatever the person receiving care, has decided is the best care and outcome for them, and the people that support them.
I could not be more impressed with the clinical and support staff who are actively engaged in ongoing education and skill development, quality review and service delivery improvement. Many of the staff work across different areas of health providing excellence and a broad range of skills to meet the broad needs of those requiring acute health services, and share their knowledge with their colleagues to promote best practice growth and development as a collective team of care givers.
The Community should feel enormously proud of the efforts their health service displays to meet their needs in the event of the acute health incident or crises and the resulting service delivery. I may be an outsider, but I have been so warmly welcomed, supported and cared for in this new role, I have no doubt that that any one accessing Acute Services would receive the same country hospitality and the best available care.
