Nursing staff from Nambour Hospital’s Pre Anaesthetic Evaluation Unit (PAEU) have called on Wishlist to help them go above and beyond the call of duty to ensure the best quality of care for their patients.

A team of 14 nurses from PAEU led by their clinical lead Julie Osgood and Linda McCardell, recently traveled to Melbourne to attend a specialised conference to further their skills and knowledge in Cardio Pulmonary Exercise Testing Unit (CPX).

In 2014 Wishlist funded the purchase of the CPX machine at a total cost of $60,182.

The CPX machine is the first of its kind on Sunshine Coast, and last month Wishlist provided a further $5,600 in staff scholarships to allow the PAEU team to attend the Perioperative Prehabilition Cardiopulmonary Exercise Testing Conference.

Ms Osgood also presented a special paper outlining her experience setting up the CPX service at Nambour.

“We are one of the few hospitals in Australia that offer clients Cardiopulmonary Exercise Testing as a risk assessment tool in the pre-operative arena,” Mrs Osgood said.

“Attending this conference as part of a team was hugely beneficial as it allowed benchmarking opportunities from other hospitals around Australia and the United Kingdom which will help us to increase our gold standard of care,” she said.
The CPX is used to determine the fitness of a patient for surgery and tests their cardiac and respiratory fitness. This assists clinicians in ensuring the pre and post-operative safety of surgical patients.
Nurse Amanda Bougoure said the support of Wishlist had been gratefully received.

“I decided along with many of my colleagues that I would attend the conference regardless of the considerable costs,” Ms Bougoure said.

“The level of invaluable information that directly related to our roles at the PAEU at Nambour Hospital was just too good to miss, so when Wishlist granted our staff scholarship applications I was thrilled,” she said.

“We really pride ourselves on maintaining a gold standard of care for all clients throughout the Sunshine Coast Hospital and Health Service and we’re in an incredibly lucky position to have the support of a hospital foundation as proactive as Wishlist,” Julie Osgood said.

Wishlist CEO Lisa Rowe said all nurses should be recognized with gratitude on International Nurses Day for their active role in showing upbeat initiative throughout local hospitals.

“Julie and her team are just one of thousands of examples of the commitment and devotion displayed by the nursing profession every day,” Ms Rowe said.

“It is an honor for Wishlist to have played such a strong supporting role in making the CPX services a reality at Nambour, and one that will raise the profile of the broader local Health Service for many years to come,” she said.

International Nurses Day is THIS WEEK, Thursday 12th of May.
Wishlist has committed $5,000 per year for the past 10 years to acknowledge and thank SCHHS nurses for the outstanding work they do for local Sunshine Coast families by providing cakes of celebration for nurses at every campus across the Health Service on International Nurses Day.