Tara Murray
A Western Health doctor who has seen the worst of the pandemic is hoping that Australia will learn the lessons from other countries.
Dr Laura Carter started at Sunshine Hospital’s emergency department three weeks ago having worked in the United Kingdom through its first three waves.
Dr Carter worked in several different departments and hospitals in the United Kingdom, dealing with some of the sickest people.
“It’s quite difficult to get that across to people who haven’t witnessed that,” she said during today’s COVID-19 press conference.
“Back in the UK in the waves, it’s quite tough … You had to treat colleagues, had to treat family members and deal with colleague deaths.
“You had to deal with shortages. When the waves were really big we had to decide how to rationalise oxygen. There were lots of fears about hospitals running out of oxygen.
“It’s a horrible experience for anyone to go through. It’s very hard to see whole family units torn apart by COVID.”
Dr Carter said she had decided to move to Melbourne to progress her career due to the high global recognition.
She said Australia had done the right thing getting on the front foot and prioritising people’s health above the economy.
“The numbers in Victoria are rising and increasing,” she said.
“I really hope the way that Australia has handled the pandemic, the buffer they’ve given, the experience they’ve got from the rest of the world and the vaccine is really going to help manage that we’re not going to get to the point we had to manage globally.”
Dr Carter said that since she had started working at Sunshine, the hospital had gone from no cases to seeing cases daily.
She said most of the people they were seeing were unvaccinated.
“In the three weeks I’ve been working, I’ve seen the numbers increase quite dramatically,” she said.
“I’ve been very impressed about the adaptability of the department. We are daily making changes to cope with notification workforce requirements.
“Last week we opened up a new floor to the emergency department, not only to separate people with covid from non-covid, but to create more space for the anticipation of illness that is going to come.”
The state government announced on Tuesday that it would recruit up to 1000 healthcare workers from overseas with a $2.5 million investment to help fund their relocation and provide dedicated support so they can get to work in Victoria health services as soon as possible.
