“It’s about being an advocate and a voice for children… I think we really need to speak up for the kids.”
This is the mantra Debbie Forbes lives by every day.
The Children’s Ward nurse unit manager has dedicated her years at Bendigo Health to helping children and their families get the care they need right here in the region.
After a few stints in other areas of nursing, Debbie said she “fell into” paediatric nursing.
“I’ve been working with children for about 30 years,” she said.
“I have a special interest in vulnerability, hence the work with the child-safe standards, you know creating the vulnerable children’s committees and things like that.”
During Debbie’s time, the Children’s Ward has seen many changes.
Many complex children’s cases would be moved out to Melbourne hospitals, but now that’s not the case.
“We only escalate if it’s above our expertise, but we keep a lot of them here. The acuity and number of patients has grown hugely,” she said.
“We were a fairly small unit, we had visiting medical officers and just worked along with the doctors as they came, but we’ve built it to be the unit it is today.
“We’ve looked after unwell, non-complex children for many years. We now send children to ICU and send a lot less children out to Melbourne.”
The ward has widened its scope and now supports other departments through its Inreach nurses.
“It’s really for patient flow, but from my view it was for quality of care,” Debbie said.
“A paediatric nurse in the emergency department, giving the right care at the right time and getting them to the ward or home as quickly as possible.”
Debbie says the aim is to ensure these nurses have “transferrable skills” such as how to access a port, how to do the capillary blood readings, nitrous sedation and more.
This creates more opportunities for growth within the service.
“We’ve got nurses who are doing paediatric-neonatal graduate years now, so we’re growing our own staff,” Debbie said.
“We’ve got four or five who are interested in doing a post-graduate in paeds next year, we’re really growing a strong workforce.”
It’s Debbie’s hard work and dedication that earned her a nomination for a Children’s Healthcare Australasia Medal of Distinction earlier this year.
“I didn’t get the gong, but I got recognition,” she said.
“It’s acknowledging the work you do, which is great.”
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