Teenaa koutou katoa and welcome to 2023
The start of the year has been especially demanding for several of our divisions with a noticeable increase in burns and broken bones – especially among our tamariki.
With people (especially children) out and about and enjoying themselves in the summer, it is not unexpected to see this sort of increase, but it is important to keep an eye on children, particularly if they are around hot things including BBQs, fires and boiling water.
In terms of the COVID scene, things have not been too bad at Middlemore with relatively few cases needing hospital care.
And thankfully there’s been little sign yet of the new Kraken variant.
Despite this, it is important that we all remain vigilant and exercise the same precautions towards COVID as we have over the past couple of years – wash your hands regularly, wear a mask if you’re in busy, public settings (especially indoor), test if you have symptoms, and isolate if you test positive.
These precautions are doubly important if you are thinking about visiting friends and whaanau in our hospital – basically, we ask that you do not come to visit if you’re infectious.
This is also a really good time to remind everyone about getting the right care for your condition - it’s important to know about the options for care in the community, especially if it’s not an emergency.
More information on where to go to get the right care for you condition can be found here.
On the staff front, we can report we’ve got a good number of new resident doctors starting at Counties Manukau and we’re looking forward to one of largest-ever intakes of nurses coming in February.
Good news for everybody.
Dr Andrew Connolly
Chief Medical Officer
Te Whatu Ora Counties Manukau