One of Ballarat Health Services' newest wards, 2GP overlooking Drummond Street, has become the hospital's COVID ward throughout the pandemic.
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Designed with single rooms along one side of the ward and double rooms on the other, it took on the role as the COVID ward after elective surgery was cancelled throughout the state.
Nurse Deborah Whitcher helped plan the logistics of moving the COVID ward into 2GP, and has been one of the team working there over the past seven months.
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While there have been several COVID patients cared for on the ward, most of their patients have been those admitted to hospital through the emergency department who had been tested and were awaiting results.
Typically they stayed only one or two nights until they received a negative result and were transferred to another ward, or sent home.
Most people who tested positive to COVID-19 in Ballarat recovered at home and some had short stays in hospital, but there was one older patient who stayed for several weeks.
"One good thing about BHS is while we did have some positive cases within the acute setting there was not one transmission to staff so obviously we were doing it effectively," she said.
The hospital has treated about a dozen COVID patients admitted to the ward, with the remainder of Ballarat's cases well enough to stay isolated in their homes and managed through the hospital in the home program.
Nursing in full PPE has taken its toll on all staff and Ms Whitcher prefers material PPE gowns because "the plastic ones are so hot they are like oven bags".
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On the COVID ward now there are 'runners' or nurses who help those suited up in PPE and in the rooms with patients.
"We don't want to come out of the room and take off the PPE to get something we forgot - we try to think of everything we need to do when we go in the room so it all happens at a certain time in a cluster," she said. "The runner is always scouting about to make sure the nurses in the room haven't missed or need anything."
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