WHEN regional Victorian locations were listed as exposure sites in the recent COVID-19 outbreak, it triggered a wide-scale contact tracing effort.<\/p>\n
Acting operations lead of the Loddon Mallee Public Health Unit Emma Vains guided her team through their efforts in the region, and said they\u2019d been preparing for future outbreaks.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019d been building our team in preparation for this sort of thing, so we have been employing people, we\u2019ve been training people, we\u2019ve been practicing scenarios.<\/p>\n
\u201cEveryone that is employed puts their hand up with \u2018if there\u2019s something happening, we\u2019re all in\u2019 and they\u2019re an amazing group of people,\u201d she said. \u201cThere\u2019s just no questions asked.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou often find things out after hours and people just step up and do what they\u2019ve got to do to do things really quickly.\u201d<\/p>\n
This process includes calling close contacts and businesses involved in an outbreak, interviewing them to find out about their movements and providing them with information they might need to isolate and quarantine away from others.<\/p>\n
While time is of the essence, Ms Vains said it\u2019s also important to develop trust with the person on the other end of the line.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou can ring a case or a contact back multiple times,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou build up a level of trust and rapport with them so that they know that you\u2019re not using any of the information for any other purpose except to inform other individuals that might have come in contact so that testing and quarantining can happen.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt is a very personal thing. No one wants to think that they\u2019ve spread something or infected their family.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s a level of fear and you need the information but there\u2019s a human on the other end of the line that, through no fault of their own, is caught up in something that they don\u2019t have a lot of control over.\u201d<\/p>\n
Ms Vains said the team engaged their surged workforce last month to allow for extra contact tracers to work on the outbreak, and during these peak periods staff make sure to help one other.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s like anything in healthcare,\u201d she said. \u201cYou support each other.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhenever we debrief on a case, we will debrief from a perspective of both how that case might need to be further supported but you also debrief on \u2018you\u2019ve had a couple of really testing calls, you\u2019ll need a coffee run or you\u2019ll need to get out in the open air\u2019.\u201d<\/p>\n
While the current outbreak remains contained in regional areas of the state, Ms Vains said her contact tracing team \u201care forever looking at improving\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ll also be working towards, in downtimes, continuing to grow our surge workforce but also to build their skill set and keeping them engaged.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen we\u2019re not in a surge you don\u2019t want people sitting there doing nothing, but you do want to have them engaged so that when we hit that surge, they actually hit the ground running.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
WHEN regional Victorian locations were listed as exposure sites in the recent COVID-19 outbreak, it triggered a wide-scale contact tracing effort. Acting operations lead of the Loddon Mallee Public Health Unit Emma Vains guided her team through their efforts in the region, and said they\u2019d been preparing for future outbreaks. \u201cWe\u2019d been building our team […]<\/p>\n