A SPECIALISED team of nurses working across the Redlands and Logan have been delivering at home care to isolated and COVID-positive patients in the comfort of their homes.
The Acute Care@Home service helped limit the number of unwell people needing to be out in the community seeking treatment during the pandemic and are still working to monitor patients across the Metro South Health catchment who are isolating at home or at a hotel.
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Acute Care@Home assistant director of nursing Melissa McCusker said the nurses were given a difficult task at the beginning of the pandemic.
She said new information about the virus was being discovered every day and nurses had to adapt.
"The teams are always there to care for patients, but the pandemic presented a rapid and steep learning curve about dealing with a new disease, sometimes daily changes in protocols, new requirements, new equipment and training in PPE protocols," Ms McCusker said.
"Providing a pandemic response was not something any of our nurses have experienced before, and they continued to put patients first when very little was known about the virus."
Ms McCusker said the team were incredibly professional in their response and often had to ease the fears of patients and their families in what was an uncertain situation.
"They rose to the challenge and the results of their phenomenal contribution can be seen with the continued decline of active cases in Metro South," she said.
Acute Care@Home has a team of 60 nurses across Princess Alexandra, Logan, Redland and Queen Elizabeth II hospitals.
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