Å·±¦ÓéÀÖ today celebrated a decade of providing emergency care at Robina Hospital.
Since opening the Robina Hospital emergency department on 3 September 2007 more than 522,000 people have presented.
Executive Director of Diagnostic, Emergency and Medical Services at Å·±¦ÓéÀÖ, Paula Duffy, said the emergency department has grown to be a strong performer in Queensland.
¡°From nothing we¡¯ve built an emergency department that consistently tops the state with our national emergency access target (NEAT) performance,¡± Ms Duffy said.
¡°Robina Hospital opened in 2002 with renal and ICU services and we¡¯ve since added the emergency department, and other community health facilities.
¡°At the time we predicted we¡¯d be seeing 50,000 people at emergency within a decade, but by our tenth year we saw almost 62,000 emergency department presentations.¡±
Robina Hospital emergency department director Dr Paul Bowe has been based at Robina Hospital for the past 10 years and has watched the growth in demand.
¡°We were originally seeing about 87 patients a day, but this has almost doubled with an average of 170 patients presenting to emergency at Robina Hospital in 2017.
¡°With the demand in presentations doubling, we¡¯ve also more than doubled our nursing staff from 49 originally to 117 today. Of the original emergency department nursing staff, more than 40 per cent are still with us today,¡± Dr Bowe said.
Acting Clinical Nurse Coordinator, Christine Green, has worked in the Robina Hospital ED since opening and said she¡¯s seen an incredible amount of change in the emergency department over the years.
¡°The biggest changes we¡¯ve seen are the increase in patients presenting. I think we saw 48 on the first day and we¡¯re now seeing more than three times that each day,¡± Ms Green said.
¡°We used to have no pathology after hours, which really slowed down the process of seeing patients and treating them. Now that we¡¯ve got 24 hour pathology on site, it really makes a big difference.
¡°Plus there¡¯s things like the building expansions and staff expansions ¨C it¡¯s just a really lovely place to work.¡±
The Robina Hospital emergency department was the third expansion of the former St Vincent¡¯s Hospital, which was purchased by Queensland Health and opened in June 2002.
Current emergency department staff and former staff will celebrate with a series of events over the coming week.