The Sunshine Hospital Emergency Department (SHED) provided 79,548 episodes of care in the 2020/21 financial year. This is below the 2018/19, & 2019/20 presentation numbers. The man driver of the decreased presentations was reduced Paediatric presentations due to the COVID pandemic, and associated lockdowns.
The SHED services the growing population of Melbourne’s outer Western suburbs. This area of Melbourne’s population increased by 16.5% between the last two population censuses (2011 and 2016). The population of this area is forecast to continually grow, government agencies are forecasting population growth to 1.2 million people at 2030.
The Sunshine Hospital Emergency Department received capital infrastructure funding to expand its physical capacity in 2017. The expansion has more than doubled the available space to provide clinical care to the community.
The role of the Sunshine Hospital (SH) Emergency Department (ED) is to receive, assess, stabilise and manage patients across all age groups who present with a wide variety of urgent and complex conditions. The range of conditions includes major/minor trauma, surgical, medical, obstetric, communicable/non-communicable infections & mental health conditions.
Patients either self-present or are referred to the ED. For the full year of 2019/20 over 31% of patients arrived at the SHED by Ambulance.
Currently Sunshine Hospital is classified as a Level 3 ED, suitable for managing the most complex cases and providing some sub-specialty services, Paediatric and a large obstetric service. It is a designated Metropolitan Trauma Service for adults; however major trauma cases are transferred to major trauma centres.
The Department is separated into five clinical areas, that are each led by a multidisciplinary team. The areas are, Triage and Emergency Services Arrival, Resuscitation, Adult Acute, Children’s, and Short Stay. Patients are streamed to the most appropriate clinical area based on a defined clinical and demographic criteria.
Together, delivering safe, high quality emergency care to the community of the West.
The infographic to the left, provides a visual representation of the relationships between the clinical environments of the Sunshine Hospital Emergency Department.
The provision of care in each clinical area is provided by a clinical team. These clinical teams work together to manage the patient demand of the day.
The teams are responsible for an defined area of clinical space, receiving patients based on the streaming principles outlined in The Streaming of Patients – SHED QRG. At a high level the patient journey at the Sunshine Hospital Emergency Department will include :
