Mrs. Elizabeth Orr1, Ms. Vivian Leung1, Associate Professor Caroline Marshall1
1Royal Melbourne Hospital, Parkville, Australia
Biography:
Liz Orr is an Infection Prevention Clinical Nurse Consultant and the Manager of Infection Prevention and Surveillance Service at The Royal Melbourne Hospital. She has led her team through the Melbourne Health response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Liz has held Infection Prevention Clinical Nurse Consultant positions with Hand Hygiene Australia, VICNISS, Austin Health and Monash Health. She has completed studies in Leadership and Master of Public Health. Liz is a member of the Australasian College of Infection Prevention and Control and sits on the VICNISS Advisory Committee. She has published research with multiple presentations at conferences.
Abstract:
Background
The Royal Melbourne Hospital (RMH) has ageing infrastructure with limited numbers of single and negative pressure rooms outside the infectious diseases ward, highlighting the need for additional suitable rooms to manage incidental COVID and other respiratory illnesses in general, speciality surgical and medical wards.
Actions
RMH reviewed options including installing traditional N-Class negative pressure rooms which proved to be cost and space prohibitive. We explored other solutions and installed an Australian-first bespoke ventilation unit (Agema Biosafety 2.0 rooms) which generate negative pressure whilst ensuring high air change rates and HEPA filtering in existing single rooms. We installed two bespoke units with anterooms in our CCU and one in the Haematology/BMT Unit. Due to their success, a further 10 commercially available units were installed in the other speciality wards without anterooms.
Results
The bespoke units and 10 commercially units were installed on 13th December 2022 and 2nd August 2023 respectively, allowing patients access to a negative pressure room on their speciality ward. We provided an instruction manual and troubleshooting procedure. Informal feedback on acceptability, ease of use and improved patient care from staff was positive. So far, 340 patients have used these rooms for COVID-19.
Conclusion
Our AGEMA units have been a very successful addition to our limited number of negative pressure rooms allowing all patients treatment in their speciality ward to improve the care they receive in a COVID safe environment. These rooms are also used for other respiratory illnesses to minimise the risk of aerosol transmission.