nslhd response and management of covid-19: update For intensive care specialist Dr Celia
Bradford, the COVID-19 crisis is the “single most” challenging time in her 20 year career in intensive care. Working in Royal North Shore Hospital’s intensive care unit, Dr Bradford is part of a team of medical specialists who are treating COVID-19 patients, many of them young. Both RNSH and Hornsby Ku-ring-gai hospitals are caring for COVID-19 patients as part of the NSW Health’s whole- of-system pandemic response, supporting the Sydney Health Accommodation (SHA) and western Sydney hospitals which are treating a high volume of patients where community transmission remains high. As part of the NSLHD’s response, the dedicated COVID-19 ward has opened in the Douglas Building at RNSH. With 55 beds, the ward is designed to care for low risk patients who may have COVID-19 or who are transitioning back to their homes or aged care facilities.
(Left to right) Dr Amanda White and Dr Celia Bradford scrubbed ready to put a patient on dialysis
Built last year, the ward supports the acute services where ICU and respiratory departments are treating COVID-19 patients who require extra support. “Patients are consumed by this disease: it takes over every part of their body,” Celia said. Deputy Head of Intensive Care Dr Sarah Wesley encouraged anyone still undecided about vaccination or who hasn’t received theirs to go and do so. “COVID-19 patients are spending a very long time in ICU,” she said.
patients are particularly those who are on life support or some type of breathing machine, they are spending two to four weeks at a minimum with us. “The biggest message from healthcare workers working frontline looking after COVID-19 patients is to get vaccinated as soon as you can.” At Hornsby, the hospital has enacted its COVID-19 plan with its ICU seeing a number of patients with COVID-19. Across the district, nurses and other health professionals have temporarily stepped out of their normal roles to work in the SHA.
“Unlike patients with pneumonia and other
diseases who might spend a few days, our COVID-19
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