I have worked for Gold Coast Health for 20 years. Never have I felt greater trust and confidence in our health service than I do at this moment.
Covid19 has been looming on our horizon for some weeks. Predictably, yet startlingly, the sense of urgency has accelerated rapidly. The signal to noise ratio has sharpened and it is clear that we are facing an unprecedented period in healthcare service provision.
For many of us, it will be a once-in-a-career event (or at least we hope it will, because we hope that our community will not face a challenge like this again soon). We are ready.
We are ready because our teams, departments and organisation have been working relentlessly to ensure that we are as prepared as we can be. We have learned lessons from our colleagues around the world and have determined to honour their service by doing the best we can with ours. Supplies and equipment have been sourced; staffing has been optimised; as many contingency plans as we can formulate and implement have been undertaken. There is a robust tiered response plan that has depth and breadth across our health service.
Our ED Director, David Green, has stepped forward once again, leading our department not only with logistics, but also taking the time to check in on staff and start conversations and action on how they can be best protected and supported. Our IACS Clinical Director, Audra Gedmintas, has led (and continues to lead) our division in a spectacular manner that has been considered, collaborative, cohesive and comprehensive.
We are ready because, as healthcare workers, this is what we committed to. In the movie-reel of our careers, this is the fast-forward scene that follows the moment when we first thought and said, “I want to be a nurse/social worker/doctor because…” or “I want to work in healthcare as an administrative officer/cleaner/wardie/volunteer because…”. We have come in on days off to practice Personal Protective Equipment use, we have cancelled leave, we have taken on extra tasks to help out where we can.
We are not naïve. We know the risks to ourselves, personally and professionally. As we do every day with our clinical decisions, we have calculated benefit versus risk, and then reached beyond such calculations, concluding that – at a deeply personal level – what we can and will contribute far outweighs what we might lose.
Now, being ready doesn’t mean that we won’t struggle. It does not mean that we won’t fail on some fronts. It certainly doesn’t mean that our community, our organisation or our people will come out of this unscathed. We will struggle; we will fail on some fronts; we will, each of us, be injured in some way, by Covid19. But we will work together; we will continually learn from our failures and strive to do better; and – when the time allows – we will help each other to heal.
We are ready. This is our time. Covid19 – bring it.
