For Echuca Regional Health’s director of emergency medicine, Doctor Simon Judkins, every day is different.
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While a typical day in the ERH emergency department (ED) involves seeing about 75 patients a day — each day and each patient differ significantly.
Dr Judkins said you had to be prepared for anything when you worked in an emergency environment.
“Our doors never close and we do have to be ready for anything at any time,” Dr Judkins said.
“We could be sitting around with two patients in the ED and then five minutes later, we're in the middle of a resuscitation.
“There's a lot of variation in the day, but we’ve learnt to expect the unexpected at all times. That variation throughout the day can also be one of the more exciting parts about working in emergency medicine.”
Dr Judkins is one man with an impressive repertoire.
He has spent more than 20 years working in a variety of director positions with Austin Health, he was the president of the Australasian College of Emergency Medicine from 2017 to 2019 and he has also worked with the government.
He balances working at ERH with being on call for disaster management at St Vincent’s Hospital, working at Austin Health, being on the board of the Australian Medical Association and working with the Australasian College of Emergency Medicine.
He is a long-time advocate of regional and rural healthcare and has made it his mission to speak about the need for more resources.
“Australia has a very metro centric healthcare system,” Dr Judkins said.
“A lot of regional health care providers really struggle to get the resources and the staff they need.
“I’ve tried to address these issues by encouraging more trainees to head to regional communities and by working alongside government sectors, such as the Victorian Department of Health to explore and identify how to motivate specialists into moving.”
After many years of speaking on the topic, Dr Judkins, who was based in Melbourne, said he knew that he would need to take the plunge himself.
“I knew I’d been talking the talk for quite a few years so it was time to walk the walk,” he said.
It was at the end of 2020 that he took on a role with ERH and in early 2021 was appointed as the director of emergency medicine.
He now spends half of each week in Echuca and half in Melbourne.
Despite all the hours spent sitting in his car, he said he loved working in Echuca Moama.
“ERH is a fantastic place to work,” Dr Judkins said.
“Over the last 18 months to two years, we've managed to put together a really great team in the ED.
“We've gone from being a department that was relying heavily on locum doctors to a very stable, senior medical workforce.
“Our staffing profile is a lot more stable than it has been in the past.
“We’d still like to have another two or three more regular staff members and that is something that we’re currently working on.”
Being tourism centric, Echuca Moama is a unique location for those who are practising emergency medicine.
Dr Judkins said the ERH ED could have patients presenting with injuries from a fall, to a motorbike accident or an accident at the Southern 80.
“On long weekends and school holidays, the population increases significantly, but we still need to ensure that we have the same level of staff available through those times and that is what can be challenging,” he said.
“It's all about maintaining the quality of standards in the emergency department, so we’re fortunate that we do have a very dedicated team here.”
Dr Judkins said ERH’s ED was a fulfilling and rewarding place to base yourself out of.
“Just recently, we received a notification from the hospital executives saying that the number of compliments in the last six months have increased and the number of complaints have halved,” he said.
“Knowing that all the hard work we're putting in is translating into good patient care is rewarding.
“ERH is also accredited for emergency medicine training so there's also a lot of reward in seeing junior doctors and nurses grow their clinical skills and competence.”
Dr Judkins has a strong vision for the future of the emergency department including offering better outreach support to other local healthcare providers.
He said this would hopefully reduce the amount of patients who needed to travel to Bendigo or Melbourne for emergency treatment.
Another goal of Dr Judkins is to get the word out that working in a regional or rural community can make a significant positive impact to that community.
He said working in a major hospital was like being a small fish in a big pond.
“It’s really difficult to make a significant positive impact in places like that,” he said.
“But in Echuca Moama, you have an immediate impact because you are always going to be providing a vital service to that community.
“We know the population is growing in Echuca Moama and that means healthcare needs to grow with it.”
While this system was really stretched, Dr Judkins urged communities to understand that everybody was working as hard as they possibly could to provide high-quality health care.
He welcomed any community feedback via https://erh.org.au/feedback/