{"id":5820,"date":"2017-01-13T16:24:00","date_gmt":"2017-01-13T05:24:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.rch.org.au\/news\/?p=5820"},"modified":"2017-02-02T11:24:27","modified_gmt":"2017-02-02T00:24:27","slug":"meet-our-nurses-wallaby","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.rch.org.au\/news\/meet-our-nurses-wallaby\/","title":{"rendered":"Meet our nurses: Wallaby"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"ext_3989_wallaby-resized\"<\/a>
Meet Mark and Elaine, two of our Wallaby nurses.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Unlike any of our other wards, Wallaby is based in the comfort of a patient\u2019s home.<\/p>\n

Wallaby is a 32 bed ward, in which children are visited for and cared for by a team of qualified RCH medical and allied health staff who communicate regularly with the child’s primary treating medical unit.<\/p>\n

The aim is to reduce the anxiety by treating them in their own environment where there is less disruption to daily routine.<\/p>\n

Mark and Elaine told us what being a nurse for Wallaby ward is like.<\/p>\n

Apart from\u00a0not having to wear scrubs, how is Wallaby different to other wards at the RCH?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Elaine:<\/strong> Wallaby is different because we don’t care for a specific category of patient and we don’t actually work on a ward within the hospital.<\/p>\n

Mark:<\/strong> We treat\u00a0the child in their own home or temporary private accommodation. Children who are generally stable transfer to Wallaby to continue their care, enabling them to be treated in a more familiar environment, and allowing the family to return to some normality.<\/p>\n

Can you tell us about the type of patients you care for?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Elaine:<\/strong> We care for a wide variety of patients including patients requiring once or twice daily IV antibiotics, daily wound care, chemotherapy, respiratory and cardiac patients, diabetes and eczema care, blood pressure monitoring, infantile spasms, and children who have spent an extended amount of time in hospital who need a bit of extra support or education to transition from hospital to home.<\/p>\n

Mark:<\/strong> It would be better asking who we don’t see rather than who we do – that list would be a short one.<\/p>\n

How far and wide do Wallaby\u2019s services go?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Mark:<\/strong> Our own RCH staff cover Melbourne and suburbs to a radius of 50km. For children living outside that area, with a few\u00a0exceptions, we cover all of Victoria by engaging other agencies.<\/p>\n

What attracted you to working at the RCH and Wallaby?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Mark:<\/strong> I started at the RCH in 1987 and have spent 23 of those years\u00a0at the RCH \u2013 I keep coming back! I have now\u00a0been working with the hospital-in-the-home service for 10 years and love the variety. This work requires me using my ‘bag of tricks’ which I have accumulated over my\u00a0time as a nurse, whilst learning more every day. I love having the privilege of working with\u00a0families from all walks of life.<\/p>\n

Elaine:<\/strong> I have worked in paediatrics for the whole of my nursing career and when I emigrated to Melbourne 10 years ago, RCH was the only hospital I wanted to work at\u00a0because of its excellent reputation. I was attracted to Wallaby because of the variety, in both the patients and their conditions and in the areas I get to travel to.<\/p>\n

What’s the most rewarding thing about your role?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Elaine: <\/strong>Seeing how happy and relaxed the patients and their families are in their home environment, and how grateful the families are for our service. It enables families to get back to “normality” without having to juggle hospital life, caring for other children and all the other routine activities that put pressure on them\u00a0when they have a sick child in hospital.<\/p>\n

Mark:<\/strong> Every day I am humbled by the adversity faced by\u00a0families and their resilience. They welcome me into their homes and trust me\u00a0to care for their precious\u00a0children. If I can lessen their anxiety by providing timely, sensitive care then that is reward enough.<\/p>\n

If you weren’t a nurse, what would you be doing instead?!<\/strong><\/p>\n

Mark:<\/strong> I think I would follow the lead of my good friend George\u00a0Costanza and have become an architect or\u00a0marine biologist.<\/p>\n

Elaine:<\/strong> I would be working with children in some capacity, probably as a teacher.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

If you’d like to learn more about Wallaby Ward, you can download the My RCH app here<\/a>!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Unlike any of our other wards, Wallaby is based in the comfort of a patient\u2019s home. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":66,"featured_media":5821,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[8971,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5820","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-featured","category-in-the-news"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.rch.org.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5820","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.rch.org.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.rch.org.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.rch.org.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/66"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.rch.org.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5820"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.rch.org.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5820\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5848,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.rch.org.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5820\/revisions\/5848"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.rch.org.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5821"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.rch.org.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5820"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.rch.org.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5820"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.rch.org.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5820"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}