Dubbo

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So here we are in the new Western Cancer Center Dubbo We're standing in the radiation therapy suites and we're looking at opening this in the next few weeks

[Radiation Therapy Suite]

Additionally next door to the radiation bunker will be a new pet scanner looking at opening in the next few months and upstairs a 16 bed chemotherapy unit which is doubling the size of the chemotherapy services in Dubbo.

[Wellness Centre]

Next door to the chemotherapy suite will be a wellness centre which will provide allied health and other non-medicalservices which people living with cancer and their families will need from across the whole the west of new south wales.

Within the new cancer center there'll also be a clinical trials unit which will be looking at providing clinical trials locally to try to stop the amount of people needing to travel to sydney to access these very critical parts of cancer treatment

[Treatment Area]

It's really exciting to be standing within the new Western Cancer Centre Dubbo in the treatment area. We will give anti-cancer treatments this area located on floor 1, along with the clinics where you will see the doctors for your appointments. Down on the ground floor is the radiation therapy unit and that's where you'll go for your radiation therapy.

[Car Parking]

We have car parking close by and that will continue to increase in number as the car park is developed on the western side of the campus just near us but at the moment we'll need to park in the main car park and come through the unit.

The Western Cancer Centre here in Dubbo has really amazing world-class equipment so that'll allow patients with tumors in all different anatomical sites to receive their treatment here. Treatment can go for several weeks and that's a real great  advantage of this centre that patients are no longer travelling to Orange, Sydney, Newcastle or Canberra to get radiotherapy treatment,  They can have it here closer to home so the whole family patient carers are all benefited from patients receiving this sophisticated treatment locally.

[Training Pathways]

This cancer centre will provide benefits not just to this community but to the staff within the hospital it's able to provide people with training pathways which were not there previously.

The new ortho voltage machine will provide a comprehensive training center for radiation not just for radiation nurses but radiation therapists and radiation oncologists in Dubbo.

We'll be looking at trying to provide more allied health training pathways and opening up greater opportunities for people to move to Dubbo and live in Dubbo and further their careers.

We're bringing an amazing team of radiation oncology professionals out to a regional area from all over Australia and they all feel really honoured to be part of delivering this sophisticated advanced treatment to cancer patients in regional areas. It's been a long project that is finally come to fruition and uh we can't wait to get in and serve the community.

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The new south wales health minister brad hazard announced that we would fast track  this among some other projects just to create some capacity so that if we do get inundated with very unwell people we will have that capacity to be able to look after them

I think the services that are available here to the patients are world class. I'm really pleased for the staff, I'm really happy that the staff will get to work in such a nice area because it's nice and bright and fresh.

For me personally it's another unit commissioned and then move on to the next one so it's it's another milestone really. The design of this unit we're walking through yesterday and a lot of the stuff i heard them saying that this is probably one of the best flow.  They put a lot of work into the design of the unit and i think they're really proud and they should be really proud but for health infrastructure and Saviles and Hanson Yunkan who actually built the building.

I think the quality is amazing having brought it on and delivered it so quickly and ahead of schedule is amazing.  We're situated straight above emergency so from a flow point of view straight from emergency up the lift and you're actually pretty well straight in the unit

When the intensive care is finished next year it'll put the the coronary care stroke and intensive care and the ngo suite all on the same floor so critical care space all together primarily my role is looking after patients who are critically ill at Dubbo hospital who need intensive care services like life support.

It's really beneficial to patients, the rooms are a lot nicer, there's natural light they're a lot bigger, patients will have their own bathrooms.  There are things like closed doors which are beneficial for privacy but also things like infection control so there's lots of aspects for the patients themselves there are lots of benefits for the staff as well.

We can see all of the rooms from a central point which is really important there's teaching areas and tutorial rooms which will allow us to continue with the teaching program we have, but in a space dedicated to do that.

So i'd say a huge thank you to the staff who have been involved in the design and that includes the clinical staff and intensive care but also the hospital executive and administration for the work they've done in getting to this stage and i'd like to thank also the staff that i work with on a day-to-day basis.

Moving will be a big job and there'll be a lot of changes i'm sure they'll be very happy and very satisfied with the new intensive care unit that they have.

[Music]

We had this great vision and i think that was shared by the local health district  broadly and also new south wales health infrastructure to provide this one-stop shop  for delivery of complex outpatient care.

Really the key benefits are starting to combine the specialist medical center on sitewithin the hospital itself but we also have the benefits of bringing back onsite our most senior doctors so that they're actually here within the hospital itself to manage patients if they become critically unwell.

There's enough room for people to sit without getting too close to each other in a pandemic.

It's really important for us that we're now really close to the hospital wards so if there is an emergency we can get down to our patients who are in patients very quickly

Having all our outpatient services co-located here in the hospital we'll streamline things for patients make it much easier for them to find what they're looking for.

Honestly it's like working in a big tertiary hospital in the city and i think our patients deserve to have the same level of facilities that patients in Sydney have. We had some elders come on board to talk about what was appropriate for our indigenous

Patients we had people use in a patient user group, so we had people from all walks of life it wasn't just staff you know it was the community and they were involved in this to make sure the person walking through the door is also getting what they want.

We have 32 consultation rooms which will meet the current and probably 10-year time scale of need and that will also allow us to draw in training doctors training registrars at both senior and more junior levels to assist with clinics assist with patient care directly and importantly for those training doctors provide outpatient care experience and develop the skills that they'll need as they move forward as specialists.

As a trainee our job straddles both inpatient and outpatient medicine and we have to try to learn in both environments. I guess my first impression is that's just going to be so much easier when the clinics are right next door.

I initially came out here because that's where my hospital rotated to but i kept coming back because i think the people who work here are brilliant and I think it's a great cohesive medical team. I'm sure i'll come back again in the future because they now have a fantastic new hospital and outpatient facilities.

i'm the senior respiratory scientist here at Dubbo base hospital and i'm delighted to welcome you to our new fancy pulmonary function laboratory. It's twice as big as the area i had before and because of that we've been able to expand our portfolio of tests that are available to the people here in the central west.

This facility is phenomenal it's beautiful it's bright it's new and there's so many different things we can do here now you know imagine coming into town and going to one place and being able to do four or five appointments – amazing!

We're going to have our staff all together everybody is going to be in the one place and that is exactly what we need here in Dubbo.

Personally i'm super excited to be working in this lovely new building we've been waiting a long time for it to come and i'm really happy that my tax dollars are being spent on beautiful hospital like this for my community

[Music]

So the Dubbo emergency department sees approximately 40,000 patients per annum. We service the northern sector of Western New South Wales local health district which has a geographical area approximately sizer Spain. Now having an appropriately staffed and equipped ED is absolutely integral to providing for the healthcare needs of our population.

So the plans for the new department have taken into consideration not just the service needs of the community now but also extrapolating to the future from modelling and future growth a big reason why the current department has been able to cope under the challenge that's faced with is because of the excellent staff that we've had.

A very adaptable, flexible dedicated and motivated the new emergency department is just one of several redevelopment projects that have been going on in double over the last five or more years and we've been heavily involved in the lead-up to the move into the new department from a nursing as well as a medical administration point of view but also all the support services that we'll be moving across as well.

So I think patients are really going to notice a difference once they move into the new department particularly patients local patients who spent time in our old department. There's much more space which makes it easier to do our undertaking, our core clinical operations the difference will be very clear immediately once patients start rolling through our door.

We have designed an a.1 world-class facility ED department to double what we're going to do now is bring in new models of care leave behind the old and just provide an a.1 service for the people of our community which is very exciting.

So we're going to have four-bedroom Bay well an acute halt a needy short-stay unit will have our fast-track area and with that we're going to have increased staffing as well the people who are involved had foresight and vision that double is expanding at a rapid rate.

So the beauty of this is this ED department is purpose-built for that growth so we'll be able to accommodate well into the future increased demand on our facility.  I've been involved  in the redevelopment I think since the 2016 so it has been a long road. The biggest challenge that we face at the moment is space so we've really addressed that with this department we've doubled in size it's really go to service well into the future as far as size goes so for the first time ever Dubbo Hospital will have an MRI service everyone's very excited about it we've got a second CT coming on board as well.

So we're doubling our capacity for CT scanning, we've got ultrasound and general x-ray as well as the OPG for dental x-rays and fluoroscopy which is your screening procedures.

Yes I think the new department's going to be a great environment for patients it's not just a place to be diagnosed it's a place to get better,  so that's what we want to do with this department and we've really tried to make some nice bright spaces so the patient's not only feel like they're getting a good service but they're comfortable in the environment.

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We’re here because we've got a brand-new dialysis unit that opens on the 10th of December.  It's been purpose built for to meet all our needs and our patient's needs and it's been a long time in the planning and it's fantastic.

My name is Trevor McCallister and I have a darling wife Pauline and I have dialysis here three times a week. I've had very good service from their staff here and they have looked after me beautifully for those four odd years.  The facilities here as you are probably aware are pretty tight and pretty inadequate which I suppose would be the word to use.

The challenges are that they come in and they have to usually wait a little while not long but they actually sit on in a chair recliner chair attached to a machine for best part of five to six hours three times a week, every week for the rest of their lives.

We did a lot of consultation with my staff and I was consulted a lot and we all decided we wanted a unit that had lots of windows, that was our number one wish for the patients and that we wanted a central nurse's station so the nurses can see all the patients and they can see us and we can see each other and a dedicated staff area, so and we discussed things like should we have walls between the patients which was sometimes suggested by other agencies and my staff and patients we talked to them and they said no we don't want walls between patients. We have to have some single rooms but we want to open just with curtains and then that's what we've delivered.

So when the government gave us more funding for stages three and four there was the opportunity for us to actually develop and design a new dialysis unit above the current EDSU, which is what we've done.

The new services were getting a purpose-built to standard dialysis unit with lots of natural light, TVs for all the patients, single rooms for those that need it, a home training unit, consult room a dedicated staff area and we also have the up-to-date nurse assist call so we don't currently have that in the old unit, so the nurse is with a patient and needs help they can just hit a button and a certain colour that alarm that light goes on in alarm sounds so another nurse then can look straight up and say oh that nurse needs my help, yes it meets all the guidelines, ticks all the boxes.

Oh I think I'm looking forward to having a brighter facility and they'll have better equipment and that sort of thing to do they work,  so I'm looking forward to seeing all that happen and it'll be nice to be able to look out the window and see what's going on outside.

So it'll be a much better building environment for them I'm sure to lift their spirits because it's so bright and clean and natural and it's just meets all the things that they need to keep their five to six hours that they're here a little bit more beneficial and alive and waiting for this time to come I know it's been a bit of a while and we've not been in the most ideal situation where we are we've still managed to provide the service out and we'll continue to do that, but in a much better environment so I hope you all enjoy it.

[Music]

I told the students that if they come to the school of rural health they will have a great learning experience, they'll see a fascinating array of general medicine, surgery, they'll have very close ties with their tutors and their supervisors, they'll have the opportunity to do outreach and they'll also find themselves in a very supportive community and I think that the experience they’ll have here is a great experience in general medicine, general surgery and in the subspecialty areas as well and its associated with the opportunity to live in a community for a year and to bond with that community as well, so I think it's a totally unique experience of we're offering here.

I've been a student at Orange hospital for over a year before I became an intern and before that I'd been a student in Dubbo both with the school of rural health I absolutely loved living here and didn't really ever want to move back to Sydney so that's probably the main reason I applied. You have amazing experiences here that you don't get an opportunity to have in Sydney, so you get to go on outreach clinics you get to see a lot more sort of advanced pathology, I really like the fact that is an intern I'm exposed to a lot of general medicines so you know general surgical presentations, general medical presentations and I think that's really good training regardless of what specialty you end up going into.

I think one of the barriers that stops people coming out here as a student is that there's a lot of misconception in Sydney that you'll miss out on something by not spending a year in Sydney or that you'll be disadvantaged in terms of getting into training programs later on. That's really not the case, usually you get more out of being here than you do out of having another year in Sydney,  plus in my experience the people that have been in years ahead of me, have actually had better chances of getting into training programs in Sydney and quite competitive jobs than people that have done their internships in big teaching hospitals.

So I was like a student here as a fourth-year student so a couple of months at the end of the year and came back after elective. I very, very much enjoyed Orange mainly because of the support that I got from fellow students and also the other Doctors. I think the staff here have been fantastic both at the school of rural health and within the hospital , they see the potential for all the students coming through to be a very, very valuable part of the Doctor network into the future.

I think just trying that community feel that you don't get in Sydney is really good for studying and for working, it's a lot easier to get to know people to form relationships and to get the benefits of having those relationships in terms of, yeah, being in theater and it's patient contact and that kind of thing.  Well yesterday I scrubbed in and assisted on a caesarean so I helped deliver a baby for the first time that was very exciting. I've been first assistant in theatre, I've travelled to the rural communities and helped with clinics in the smaller country towns, I've done my own minor procedures which is very exciting when I was on my community term.

So it's probably the best year of uni really I came out here in third year, this is the hospital that I'm the most familiar with. I lived in the student accommodation with 14 other students, we all spend time together we all went pub together we all played footy for the same team and we went to uni and had a great time learning with really good teachers and a really sort of cohesive environment. Well I think it certainly was an advantage,  I mean it's in the practical sense it's good to study at a hospital where you work the first week here I knew where to find everything I knew all the bosses and I settled in a lot quicker than people who had to come from other hospitals. I think in a wider sense I was prepared by going to school of rural health because it's a great place to learn to be an intern, the teaching is much more practical, it's a lot more hands-on and it's certainly a lot more consultant on student and student on registrar type of time, so the teaching is of a higher level and it allows you to move into the role with ease especially doing your print term here, you sort of take over those responsibilities one at a time.

Video showing visuals of the Dubbo region, backed by music.  No words are spoken in this video.