Southland nurses thanked
There will be no cake or gettogether to celebrate International Nurses Day in Southland this year, but director of nursing Joanne McLeod says she’s proud of her extraordinary staff.
Faced with the unknowns surrounding the Covid-19 pandemic, McLeod said her team at Southland Hospital and the wider district responded with resilience, adaptability and positivity.
The team had to move quickly to respond to needs across the Southern District Health Board area over the past few weeks, with nurses being redirected to where they were needed. Every day was different, depending on the requests they received, she said.
McLeod is usually tasked with caring for the well-being of patients and nurses but during the pandemic, she had been a controller for the Southland Hospital Emergency Operations Centre.
Her days started at 7am when she looked at the occupancy and activities planned for the day at Southland Hospital.
A meeting with heads of other departments would help her establish where her team were needed at the hospital, while the rest of the day was spent fielding calls and email requests for resources and support elsewhere in the district.
McLeod helped set up the screening station at the hospital and was one of the people responsible for twice-daily Covid-19 reports to the Ministry of Health.
Invercargill nurses were thrust into the international spotlight in April when British Prime Minister Boris Johnson thanked Invercargill-born Nurse Jenny McGee for helping him recover from Covid-19.
McLeod said the episode helped Southlanders recognise the skill, compassion and care of Southland nurses. ‘‘Nurse Jenny has only highlighted the work that Invercargill nurses are doing.’’
McLeod hoped the recognition would inspire young people to take up nursing.
‘‘It’s a great career with so many pathways,’’ she said. ‘‘The ability to make a difference in a patient’s life when they are at the most vulnerable is very rewarding.’’
That was one of the reasons McLeod became a nurse, but in her role as a director of nursing, she got to look after the welfare of nurses, too.
She believed the winning ingredients for a great nurse were the combination of a compassionate and caring nature, with critical and scientific thinking. ‘‘Nurses are a crucial cog in the wheel of the healthcare system,’’ she said.
International Nurses Day today would usually be celebrated with cake and a gathering, but as it wouldn’t be possible to do so this year, McLeod said she would be thanking staff with a slide show and video. McLeod said both she and the board’s management were proud of the work nurses had done in the Covid-19 response.