By Sheree Hoddinett
A newly appointed paediatric team at Caboolture Hospital is bringing a wave of enhanced expertise and dedicated care to children and families in the community. The team – compromising four new medical experts with a combined 97 years of experience between them - will support and streamline paediatric services at the hospital.
The emergency department and the paediatric emergency services at the hospital were relocated to the new Clinical Services building and has been in operation since December 6, 2023. To ensure a better patient experience for a booming region that has a high population of paediatric patients, a separate paediatric triage and waiting area has been initiated. The new roles will support better operation of the paediatric ED area, as well as across care on the ward and in outpatient areas at Caboolture Hospital.
The new staff include:
Dr Rajeev Jarugula, Clinical Director for the paediatric emergency department. Dr Jarugula was a staff specialist in the paediatric emergency at the Prince Charles Hospital, so has recent hands-on experience in paediatric emergency care at a senior level.
Rebekah Rawson recently joined the Caboolture Hospital paediatric emergency department as the Associate Nurse Unit Manager.
Dr Michelle Davison is the Medical Director of the emergency service line, overseeing Caboolture adult and paediatric emergency departments, Kilcoy Hospital, Woodford Corrections Health, Bribie Island Satellite Hospital (Yarun), and Caboolture Satellite Hospital (Kabul).
Kylie Sykes is the Assistant Nursing Director for paediatrics. Her work will span the paediatric ward, child protection unit, paediatric emergency and paediatric outpatient department.
This addition reflects the hospital’s commitment to meeting the growing needs of the region’s youngest patients.
For Rebekah Rawson who has been in nursing now for 25 years, her role as the Associate Nurse Unit Manager, entails managing the day-to-day running of the paediatric emergency department, taking care of staffing and making sure care is delivered as per the children’s health guidelines.
“A big part of my role is making sure we build a really good team and look after the community as best we can,” Rebekah said. “I've always worked in a critical care stream and done a lot of different things and a lot of education and I just found that I've become really passionate about providing really good care in a paediatric setting because one of my children was born unwell. “For me, I know what it is like to be a parent as well as a nurse, so working in paediatrics is something I’m really passionate about. I loved it from the start and felt like I could make a difference.”
Making the move to Caboolture and joining a good team of nurses and doctors, Rebekah is all about spreading positivity.
“Every day I have little positive mantras that I like to read out in the huddle,” Rebekah said. “I just try and bring positivity into every day. My main aim is to make sure that everyone feels happy at work. Everyone has to be smiling and have fun because that's why we work with kids. Every child that comes in, I treat them like how I would want my child to be treated because that's sort of what I've learned from my own experience.
“One thing I always say is, it's not about us, the parents are having the worst day of their life. Whatever is happening with their child, their life doesn't stop when they come in here. So we've got to think about the whole family and their experience. Sometimes I wish there was more people and more resources for us, but we do the best that we can. It is a good place to work and I look forward to everything we can achieve.”
To describe Dr Michelle Davison as one busy doctor, would probably be a bit of an understatement. Along with her role as the Medical Director of the emergency service line, Dr Davison also works clinically in her speciality as an adult and paediatric specialist emergency physician in the Caboolture ED regularly.
“Emergency departments are organised chaos and one of the challenges in running both is finding the balance,” Dr Davison said. “Our EDs have many different patient populations, elderly, kids, adolescents, patients with mental health issues, patients requiring a holistic approach to care and social emergency care.
“Staffing a midsized department, that has both adult and children areas requires balance and flex - we have times of surge that maybe are not matched nor predictable and we need to have a broad skillset, pockets of specialist care and then a flexible workforce that can help in all areas. Every day is different and our emergency clinicians have to make rapid assessments and be flexible to meet the needs of the hour and the day.”
A path into the medical world was inevitable for Dr Davison following in the footsteps of fellow family members.
“Medicine was in my blood,” Dr Davison said. “My dad was a rural doctor and then a hospital administrator and heavily involved in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander health, my mum was a child safety social worker and worked in rural and remote healthcare system improvement and my grandmother, a fiercely passionate nurse unit manager looking after the diggers and elderly.
“Medicine is fascinating and makes sense, it allows you to be a detective, an analyst, a risk manager, a communicator and a counsellor. As an emergency doctor, my job is meaningful, enriching, humbling, exhausting, all-encompassing and I couldn't imagine doing anything different.”
Seizing a great opportunity, Dr Davison made the move to Caboolture after previously working on the Sunshine Coast in an ED director role.
“I am passionate about clinical redesign, making our systems safe and efficient, engaging with our communities and providing an environment that both supports staff and allows our patients to heal,” Dr Davison said. “The special things about this role were the opportunity to develop an adult and PED service, but also the interlinkage with urgent care. The community at Caboolture has unique needs and the relatively high proportion of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander patient presentations and vulnerable populations was a real attraction for me and speaks to the type of medicine I like to be involved in.”
While we often hear about negative experiences at the hospital, Dr Davison said the team was working hard to make a difference, by communicating with all levels and implementing new procedures, where possible.
“The first thing we are doing is listening to our community and what we are hearing is that communication and waiting times are the source of many of the complaints,” Dr Davison said. “We are trying to improve this by looking at alternative models to meet our patient’s needs, continuing to try and improve conditions for our staff and ensure that they know the things that make Caboolture special, make the department a great place to work and make them want to join our team. This will increase the doctors and nurses on the floor and improve our waiting times and ability to match our workforce to our surge times. This takes time, but slowly and surely we are seeing improvements.
“I am excited at the opportunity we have to improve care at Caboolture, our new ED, the staff that are bolstering our existing dedicated workforce and working with our community, I think we will see great changes. I would love for our community to go back to loving their EDs and our urgent care facilities and trust that the staff there are able to care for them in the way that we all want to care for our community.”
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