We’ve had some moving and creative submissions for our COVID-19 Anthology and want to share some examples and inspire even more of our people to submit to the anthology!
Angela Davies joined Monash Health as a casual in operational support at the Cranbourne Integrated Community Centre right in the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2021 and described her memories of this time.
Despite a multitude of unknown factors, she agreed to work with the COVID Pathways Team at Doveton when she was asked.
Angela Davies, who is now in the Community Assessment Response Team Administration in Cranbourne, recalls her time working in that role.
“I felt quite nervous, and I was only working in administration. I can’t imagine how the nurses felt with their roles in the team. It was amazing to see the staff from different teams all come together to try and help as many patients as they could. Some staff even came out of retirement to come on board and help.
“Having to work around cultural and language barriers was also a challenge in itself, with fear added to the equation. It was a very challenging time for all staff,” she says.
The COVID Pathways Team based at the Doveton Monash site monitored COVID-19 positive patients in hospital and at home. As part of the administration team, Angela’s role was to call hospitals, check patients’ conditions and organise pulse oximeters and blood pressure machines to be delivered to Monash Health patients.
She would then correspond with the delivery team as to how many pulse oximeters and blood pressure machines were needed, and where.
Looking back, Angela says she feels a great sense of achievement to be part of such an amazing team of people, who were so dedicated and worked long hours trying to save lives during such trying times.
“Overall, I have to say I loved my time with the COVID Pathways Team and have so many fun memories while working on the Doveton site. I ended up with a nickname of ‘The Captain’, this was because we had to have a cutoff time for the delivery drivers to organise the pulse oximeters and blood pressure machines to be delivered the next day.
“I would take control of the overhead microphone and announce at 4:00pm each afternoon, ‘This was a last call for a Probe’, another name for the pulse oximeters. This in turn would create a bit of a rush of patient orders,” she recalls.
Angela remembers that at the beginning of the pandemic, her team was monitoring around 50 patients a day but within a matter of weeks, they were monitoring 800 patients per day, with clinicians working across multiple sites in the Monash Health catchment.
There was also a team of nurses driving out to patients to test family contacts of COVID positive patients, including babies.
“Despite the long hours and busy work schedules, we all made many new friends and learned so much, not just with COVID but also during our lunch breaks, meeting so many staff from all different hospitals and departments.
“I have so many memories I will take with me forever, many laughs and of course there were some sad times. But overall, I have enjoyed such an amazing experience working with some amazing Monash staff with some groundbreaking results and it was a privilege to be part of the team,” she says.
Don’t miss your chance to submit your experiences of the pandemic in the Monash Health COVID-19 Anthology. Submissions are being accepted until Friday, 22 December 2023 here!
Approved by: David Bloxham, General Manager, Communication and Engagement