News

MBH expansion in ICU capacity

Fri, 07 Aug 2020 07:11:00

Mildura Base Hospital has received specialised equipment for a major expansion of its Intensive Care Unit capacity as a preparatory response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

The hospital this week received its delivery of beds and equipment from a $1.3 billion Victorian Government push for extra ICU beds across the State.
MBH Director of Intensive Care Dr Alison Walker said the additional equipment and consumables would allow an expansion of the hospital’s ICU bed capacity from eight to 12 beds, with a final target of 16 ventilated beds.
“We know that this pandemic is a long way from being over. Fortunately, we haven’t yet had large numbers of confirmed cases in the Mallee, but we need to be ready and we now have a much better capacity to respond and protect lives if the situation changes,” Dr Walker said.
“We’ve received additional physical beds, as well as supplies of ventilators, infusion pumps, humidifiers, additional high-flow nasal oxygen pumps and a new ultrasound machine for vascular access” she said.
“The equipment is now here and ready to be deployed in line with the very detailed pandemic planning we have done on a local and Loddon-Mallee Cluster level, should that be needed.”
MBH Intensive Care Nurse Unit Manage Sue Hale said the upskilling of nursing staff was continuing to ensure a specialised workforce was ready to deploy if Mildura experienced a spike in COVID-19 cases.
“There’s no point having the equipment and the beds if we don’t have the skilled staff to safely care for the high-needs patients who may require them,” Ms Hale said
“Caring for a patient on a ventilator with COVID-19 requires one-on-one attention and we’ve had more than 50 of our nurses who have done intensive, online training in their own time to prepare them for working in the ICU.”
Ms Hale said the upskilled staff will support the 35 permanent ICU staff if workforce demands dramatically increase due to COVID-19 cases emerging locally.
“The specialised training was a huge undertaking by each of the nurses involved.  It was completed in a condensed timeframe, but nonetheless, some of the modules took around 40 hours to complete, and we’re fortunate so many were willing to step up,” she said.
“The training is now being complemented by hands-on experience in the ICU, where we are rotating about eight nurses through at a time for orientation and hands-on training with the practical skills required.”

Pictured: (L-R) Sue Hale and Dr Alison Walker with anaesthetists Dr Antony Parakkal and Dr Santhi Kumari with some of the new beds and equipment