2024 Victorian Public Healthcare Awards

Albury Wodonga Health

Joanna Owen, Paediatric Ward Nurse Unit Manager: I've sat with many families who hear those words that their child's got cancer and their whole world is going to change.

Bailea, Mother: I remember once we got our diagnosis, that's when we found out that he would be on chemo for two years, and it would take 6 to 8 months in Melbourne. That's pretty much when our life turned completely upside down.

Imogen Reilly, Paediatric Cancer Care Coordination: So the paediatric cancer care coordinator is a very diverse role, but our main aim is to keep our paediatric oncology patients and their families close to home for as long as we can.

Lisa, Mother: It was really important for us to be able to do whatever we could locally. Whether it was blood tests, scans. Harry got to do one of his chemos in Albury as well. It was just really nice to not have to stress about traveling down the Hume again, and just being away from everyone.

Imogen Reilly, Paediatric Cancer Care Coordination: Journeying through these with a family, you feel all the highs and the lows with the family. You’re the person that's right there through all of the difficult times. But you're also right there to celebrate the really exciting milestones.

Joanna Owen, Paediatric Ward Nurse Unit Manager: As a coordinator to see them come home, families be able to have family birthday parties, marriages stay together and just that family unit to stay local is absolutely hands down the most rewarding thing.

Voiceover:

The work our health services do literally means the world to ordinary Victorians all around the state.

Our collective ability to expand the definition of what’s possible is improving health outcomes, and puts us on the path to making Victorians the healthiest people in the world.

It's the big things, like changing how and where care is delivered, and the little things, like making sure people are comfortable when they get a check up.

Often, it starts with a simple idea to do things differently, to be better – but it makes a positive, tangible difference in the lives of consumers, from improved cultural safety to getting care closer to home.

MOAH

Heather Burgess, MOAH Practitioner: If you have hyperemesis and you're feeling extremely unwell, the last thing you want to do is sit in an emergency department for sometimes hours. So we thought we could provide better care by visiting the woman at home.

Bailey, Mother: The first couple of times I went in, I was there overnight, sometimes 2 or 3 nights, just trying to keep me hydrated and keep everything down. But then having it regularly at home meant it was only an hour, which means I didn't have to find someone who's going to watch the kids. I could do it at home, and it was done.

Heather Burgess, MOAH Practitioner: We go out to their home. We do everything that we need to do there. They take their blood pressure, administer I.V. therapy if we need to.

Bailey, Mother: It was such a big benefit to a mental health as well. Speaking to somebody, because you haven't left the house for days because you get so sick. The improvements are pretty much straight away. You have energy that you hadn't had for days, and then you can function and keep on top of it a bit more.

Heather Burgess, MOAH Practitioner: The fact that we make the phone calls, we check in on them, they feel like they've been heard and they cared for.

VO: We know that listening to consumers is critical. That’s why Parkville Precinct Hospitals developed a new electronic questionnaire to ensure the voices of patients who identify as having a disability are being heard.

Disability Identifier Questionnaire

Brad, DI participant: It was really horrible coming into hospital with a disability. You were asked a million times what was what's the issue? What do you need for assistance and things like that? And it was just repeat after repeat after repeat.

Joanne Rowe, Disability Liaison Officer: The latest data tells us that, about 21% of the Australian population have a disability. We know that they face really significant barriers to accessing health care, and that ultimately results in poorer health outcomes.

Brad, DI participant: You answer three simple questions and can fill in a bit more information about what you'd like people to know about your disability and what they need to do. It's just there and they can hover over it and they can read it all within a few minutes. It's become really obvious that bthey are listening to us, and we're actually able to support those 24,000 people that have filled in the identifier way better than we've ever had to be supported beforehand.

VO: For Ambulance Victoria, better listening means better use of technology. They’ve incorporated video calls to help improve their triage process.

Ambulance Vic

Scott Clarke, Team Leader: Previously, we were relying solely on the information provided by people who were often having the worst day of their life. Now we can provide objective clinical assessment. And we're finding we have much improved outcomes. That directly correlates to more paramedics, more ambulances being able to respond to the Victorian public’s life threatening emergencies.

Belinda-Jane Orwin, Triage Practitioner: So by using the video, you can build that rapport with patients. They also feel that they're getting a better assessment because you can actually see them. You can get them to move around.

Scott Clarke, Team Leader: The feedback we've been receiving from the practitioners is always positive. And a common one has been “I feel like the blindfold has been taken off”.

VO: Reimagining the way we work can have a big impact. For Peter Mac, a small change in their theatre process is significantly reducing their environmental footprint.

Reusable Gowns and Drapes

Dr Hayden Snow: Surgery creates a lot of waste, a the vast majority of the carbon footprint from surgery comes from single use items. And one of the simplest ways to cut down on that carbon footprint is to shift gowns and drapes to reusable alternatives.

Vanessa O’Shaugnessy: So the introduction of reusable gowns and drapes has had a massive impact in theatre. Now we're in a position where we can take that information, how much emissions we're saving, how many things we're saving from going to landfill. And we can then really build that into an ongoing process.

Dr Hayden Snow: Climate change is, you know, now recognized as being one of the major threats to human health. And so if we're in the business of improving health generally, then we need to be looking after the health of the individual in a more sustainable way.

VO: As we better understand the link between public health and the health of the environment, the Doherty Institute is breaking new ground in multi-disciplinary research.

Beating Buruli

Professor Tim Stinear, Professor of Microbiology:

The main aim of the Beating Buruli project was to solve an 80 year infectious diseases mystery. How is Buruli ulcer being spread? Our big breakthrough was to show that it is mosquitoes that is spreading the bacteria from possums and the environments they contaminate to people.

Dr Vèronique Paris, Medical Entomologist:

A lot of sampling has happened across the greater Melbourne region, with thousands and thousands of insects collected and screened for the bacterium.

Professor Tim Stinear, Professor of Microbiology:

It's our hope that the lessons we've learned here in southeast Australia about how Buruli ulcer is spreading can also be used to help understand the spread of Buruli in other countries, in particular in Western central Africa. They may not be mosquitoes, and they don't have possums in Africa, but the techniques we've used, the approaches we've taken can be applied in other countries to yield the same sort of insights.

VO: While some problems are solved using cutting edge technologies, others just need a human touch. When a bushfire threated their aged care residents, Maryborough District Health staff creatively reimagined an evacuation as a cruise ship holiday.

Cruise Ship - Evacuation

Rachel, Nurse Unit Manager: It was very smoky outside, very eerie sort of feeling.

Nickola Allan, CEO, Maryborough District Health: The decision was made early in the evening to relocate.

Mary, Resident: There wasn't any fuss and bother, you know, ‘you come in and get in there and all the rest of it’, and we were off.

Nickola Allan, CEO, Maryborough District Health: One of our residents, Ellen, said to me when I arrived at Wattle Rise. She said, “this is the nicest hotel I've ever stayed at, which one is my room?” So that kind of really led us towards how we could make this a really different experience.

Rachel, Nurse Unit Manager: To make it more of a fun experience instead of a daunting experience, which it can be, they created an itinerary for the residents with different activities that they were going to be doing through the day.

Nickola Allan, CEO, Maryborough District Health: There was quoits. And, you know, the classic, classic games that were played on a cruise ship.

I believe, because we were able to take the focus away from the relocation event and make it about something else. That was the reason why the cruise was such a success.

Mary, Resident: I wasn't put out one little bit actually. I quite enjoyed it. It was a holiday!

VO: There’s no limit to the number of creative solutions to questions of public health. To create a culturally safe environment for First Nations women, local indigenous artists designed beautiful shawls to be worn during breast screen examinations

VACCHO/BreastScreen Beautiful Shawl Project

Jill Gallagher (VACCHO): Accessing mainstream services for Aboriginal people generally was an issue, let alone specialist services such as breast screening. And so just bringing women together and talking about the barriers, amazing things can happen. And one of those amazing things is the beautiful shawl.

To have a shawl that's designed locally by local artists for local Aboriginal women - it's like having culture wrapping around you while you're in a very vulnerable moment.

Lynette Briggs, Artist: The women absolutely love it. They love it. They hang it from the windows so the light comes through. And they've you know, been really proud to show it off.

Jill Gallagher (VACCHO): Whether they're Aboriginal or whether they're non-Aboriginal, they have the solutions. So mainstream should talk to their communities more about what are the solutions.

If you feel ownership and pride in a project, it's going to work.