Anne Simmons
Latrobe Regional Hospital’s acute mental health inpatient unit will undergo a $500,000 upgrade to 20-year-old facilities to help staff keep a closer eye on patients and improve safety.
Mental Health Minister Martin Foley announced the refurbishment of the Flynn Unit nurses’ station at the Traralgon hospital on Thursday, August 16.
Mr Foley said demand for mental health services increased every year across the state, but there was a higher proportion of demand in regional communities.
“That’s why we need to make sure that the staff have a safe place to work,” Mr Foley said.
Latrobe Regional Hospital executive director mental health Cayte Hoppner said the hospital had increased its workforce substantially over a number of years, yet the nurses’ station in the 31-bed ward remained “quite small”.
“There’s quite a lot of blind spots in that nurses’ station, so structurally it needs to be refurbished,” Ms Hoppner said.
Increasing visibility of the ward from the nurses’ station is a key design feature of the upgrade to the unit which has about 1000 admissions a year.
Ms Hoppner said allowing staff to have better awareness of their surroundings was an important factor in reducing occupational violence and the refurbishment would improve safety for both patients and staff.
“We certainly do have occupational violence incidents in our organisation and we’re taking a whole-of-organisation approach to that, so looking at ways we can improve safety through ergonomic workplace design, through training, through implementing safety devices like duress alarms,” she said.
The Traralgon hospital is one of 57 health services across the state to receive state government-funded upgrades.
Mr Foley said the government’s broader investment was to help lower the need for physical or chemical restraints for patients.
“Making sure that we physically design places that allow people those rights to the minimum levels of intervention they need whilst keeping the workforce, visitors and carers safe is an important balance,” Mr Foley said.
“And sometimes, particularly in our older facilities, that balance is not quite right.”
In the case of the Flynn Unit, he said making sure staff could “keep an eye on” patients was an important part of someone’s mental health recovery.
After the announcement the minister travelled to Latrobe Community Health Service in Morwell to meet with the frontline workforce for mental health support.
LCHS chief executive officer Ben Leigh said a residential drug and alcohol rehabilitation facility within the Valley remained “really important” to offer support close to home.
He said the need for such services continued to increase and Latrobe’s number of ice-related ambulance attendances to emergency departments was the highest in Gippsland.
Mr Foley said he was “confident” over time “we’ll see more beds in residential rehabilitation services right across the state”.
