Historic start of works at Mona Vale Hospital Construction is underway on the Northern Beaches’ first inpatient palliative care unit.
Donnelley Constructions has been awarded the tender for the project, which includes the dedicated 10-bed palliative care facility and a 10-bed geriatric medical unit. General Manager Jacqui Edgley said the new facility is set to offer specialist care and support for patients and their families. “The inpatient units will be a major addition to Mona Vale Hospital, creating more employment opportunities and providing wonderful local care,” Jacqui said. “The palliative care unit will be the first of its type on the beaches to provide specialist physical and emotional care during the final stages of illness. It follows many years of lobbying by the community for a local facility. “The geriatric unit, to operate alongside the palliative care facility, will offer co-ordinated care for elderly people with complex health needs, giving them more independence and allowing them to stay at home
An artist concept of the new facility at Mona Vale
Work on the project gets underway
or in self-care accommodation within a retirement village,” Jacqui said. The project follows the construction of a new drug and alcohol rehabilitation unit, a
support services building and renovations to the Urgent Care Centre. Construction is expected to be completed in mid-2020.
Accolades to our clinical researchers It has been an exciting month for two of researchers based at the Kolling Institute of Medical Research who have won awards for their clinical research. Dr Sarah Hilmer, who is a geriatrician and pharmacologist at RNSH, picked up the Innovation Development and Evaluation Award for her work into “Minimising the Functional Burden of Medications in Older Inpatients: Implementation of the Drug Burden Index”. Sarah and her team are investigating polypharmacy in older patients and the effects of de-prescribing, with this particular project on the Drug Burden Index, funded by NSW Health’s Agency of Clinical Innovation.
Royal North Shore-based rheumatologist Prof David Hunter was awarded the Clinical Research Award from the Osteoarthritis Research Society International. This is the pre-eminent organisation internationally for this disease.
Professor Sarah Hilmer accepts the award from ACI’s Chief Executive Dr Jean-Frederic Levesque
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