30 August 2021, Melbourne, Australia
These are experienced ICU nurses who have got a wealth of knowledge and many, many years of experience amongst them. And to have them come to me in tears, that this is something like we've never seen before, and it is quite overwhelming, and that was last year. And now we are looking at a strain that potentially is more contagious.
My name's Kylie and I work at Western Health, one of the hospitals right in the Western suburbs in Melbourne. And last year, I really wanna talk to you about what happened at Western Health.
At Western Health, we had over 400 patients admitted to our hospital with COVID 19. And what we also hear, what we hear every day on the news, we generally hear about patients admitted to the intensive care units. But what I wanna talk to you today is about the overwhelming numbers of patients that are admitted to the wards in our hospitals.
So I'm privileged to be able to work with a group of nurses called the critical care outreach team, the ICU liaison nurses at Western Health. And last year, they helped prevent hundreds of admissions to our intensive care units, by acting as an extension of the ICUs. And they helped support our ward nurses to support our patients and our communities.
Now they would often come to me overwhelmed, sometimes in tears, they were worried, they would come to work worried, they were worried about their colleagues, they were worried about how they would support their colleagues on the wards looking after overwhelming numbers of acutely unwell patients. Patients that we usually don't see admitted to the wards.
They were worried about their families. They would go home after 12 hour shifts, long shifts. They would have showers before they would leave work. They'd drive home, get out of their cars, get changed out of their scrubs in their garages, have a shower again, before they would go in and speak or hug their families and their loved ones.
Now, I saw tears. I saw exhaustion. I saw nurses, consoling nurses. I saw blood across the ridges of their noses and their ears from wearing PPE for 12 hours at a time, long shifts on their feet, kilometres and kilometres of, of, of k's they'd clock up responding to emergency and calls for assistance on the wards.
What we don't understand is that they'd come to me and they'd say' Kylie, it's like nothing we've ever seen before! These patients are young, they're fit. And then the next minute they're well, and then the next minute we are taking them to ICU. Now you ask me what I'm worried about as their manager. I'm worried I'm gonna have to ask them to stand up and do it again.
And they will. Now these are senior ICU nurses. Who've seen it all before. They've done it all before. And I have to probably ask them to do it all again. They will, but they shouldn't have to. So I'm asking, you know, we are lucky. We've got science, we've got a vaccine. Please, if you haven't already ,get yourself vaccinated, make that appointment, keep yourself safe. Keep your family and your loved one safe. Keep the community safe. Thank you.