Theatres go under knife

$750,000 facelift for Cairns Hospital

TWENTY year old operating theatres at Cairns Hospital will finally be receiving a facelift to bring them into the 21st century.

The Cairns and Hinterland Hospital and Health Service will spend an estimated $750,000 on refurbishing eight operating theatres from the ground up.

Each of the theatres will be fitted out with new surgical and lighting equipment, general lighting will be replaced with dimmable LEDs, workstations and cupboards have been replaced and each room has been repainted.

The health service’s maintenance manager Ian McTackett said the upgrades would provide a much better working environment for clinicians.

“It’s future-proofed the operating theatres as well,” he said.

“We don’t have to do any upgrades here for a long time.

“It’ll bring us right into the 21st century, and moving forward, it’s an excellent opportunity for us to improve the health service.”

Theatre nurse unit manager Helen Campbell said there had been minimal impact on patients during the refurb.

“A theatre takes about two weeks to upgrade, which temporarily reduces the number of theatres available. To prevent a backlog, we organised an extra theatre day on Saturdays, so that none of our scheduled patients are kept waiting longer than necessary.”

The health service is still in the planning stage for a $3.68 million hybrid operating theatre for the hospital, a first for the facility that will combine a vascular and cardiac imaging laboratory in the same space.

Clinicians had been lobbying the State Government for a hybrid theatre since the halfbillion dollar redevelopment of the hospital was launched more than a decade ago.

IT’LL BRING US RIGHT INTO THE 21ST CENTURY