Having worked as a doctor at Footscray Hospital for 35 years, including a period as director of its emergency department, there’s not much that Professor Anne-Maree Kelly hasn’t seen or experienced when it comes to the health system.
And there will be even less once Wednesday 18 February is over with and Dr Kelly and her Western Health colleagues have completed their move from the current Footscray Hospital on Gordon Street, to its $1.5 billion replacement on the corner of Ballarat and Geelong roads.
“It’s a pretty rare event completely moving a hospital,” Dr Kelly said of the move which will begin at 7.30am and involve about 180 patients being transported the 1.3 kilometre distance between the old hospital and the new.
“A lot of hospitals have been built new. I think the last big move was when Prince Henry’s closed and Monash (medical centre) opened (in 1991).
“This is a move from one hospital to another, the same hospital to another place so it’s quite a rare event.”
A rare event and a big undertaking, but according to Dr Kelly, one that is not before time, especially where the emergency department (ED) is concerned.
“I came to Footscray Hospital when the ED that we have now was relatively new,” Dr Kelly said.
“Over the years we’ve adapted it and the spaces are quite different now and we’ve done the best we can with it, but it’s now not fit for purpose.
“It’s very old and tired and the patient experience is not great.”
Dr Kelly said the larger and more modern ED at the new Footscray Hospital will provide a better experience for patients and their families, as well as for staff.
Not that leaving their current rabbit warren for newer and more spacious surrounds won’t have its drawbacks.
“It’s quite compact, it’s quite easy to talk to everybody else,” Dr Kelly said of the old ED.
“The new one is very big.”
And for all its shortcomings, Dr Kelly said the compact surrounds of the old ED had been great for staff morale.
“We’re actually a really tight team,” she said.
“When you work in a space that’s quite cramped and difficult you become like a footy team, you come together to make it work.”
While almost all current ED staff are moving to the new hospital, Dr Kelly will be among the last to join them, instead spending the first day supervising the final departures from the old Gordon Street site.
That won’t be that case though for another long serving doctor at the hospital, Professor Phong Tran, who will be working at the new Footscray Hospital from day one, and if he has his way, for the rest of his career.
“I will probably be there for the rest of my life, I love it,” Dr Tran said.
A surgeon and head of orthopaedics at Western Health, Dr Tran joined the team at Footscray Hospital in 2007 and said the facility was showing its age and struggling to meet the demands of the growing western suburbs.
He could barely contain his excitement at the impending move to the new hospital.
“I’ve been describing it to the team as a game changer,” Dr Tran said.
“We won’t recognise ourselves and I don’t think the west of Melbourne will recognise it either, it’s going to transform healthcare and also the community in the west.”
Dr Tran said the new hospital’s close proximity to Victoria University’s Footscray Park campus would be especially beneficial.
“We’re about to launch an app called Healthy Joints in partnership with Vic Uni (VU) that’s built in Vietnamese and English to help patients deal with their osteo-arthritis and what’s been exciting about that is sharing the expertise between the two institutions,” he said.
