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A LETTER FROM OUR STAFF

As the festive season begins, we wanted to say thank you to our patients and their loved ones for their continued support. We are grateful to our community for being so thoughtful in sending chocolates, cards and flowers to our wards throughout the year.

We are writing to you as a group of healthcare workers from across the Northern Sydney Local Health District (NSLHD). Collectively, we have worked in this wonderful health district for more than 80 years and what we love most about our jobs is seeing how our work makes a difference to people’s lives. Over the decades, we have received hundreds of lovely gifts from patients and their families.

This Christmas we are asking that in lieu of flowers, chocolates or cakes, please consider giving a gift to the NORTH Foundation or your local hospital.

As you can probably imagine, over the past few years our workload has grown and changed a lot due to COVID-19 pressures, but our staff are working as hard as ever to ensure that patient care is impacted a little as possible.

During the height of COVID-19, more than a quarter of a million patients were admitted to our facilities across the NSLHD. And just like you, many of us have been affected by COVID-19. We have lost people we know and have had our children isolating at home while we were out at work. However, our commitment to serving you and our patients has not changed. We send our sincere sympathies to everyone who has been directly and indirectly affected by the pandemic. We understand and we feel the impact too.

We need your help. This year we hope that you will give a gift to support the NORTH Foundation.

When you are discharged, we don’t stop caring about you and often the relationship that we have with patients is ongoing. In the renal transplant team, we have a life-long relationship with our patients and see them for regular appointments sometimes spanning decades.

At this time of year especially, grateful patients often send us thank you gifts like chocolates and cakes. We also get given beautiful flowers but this is one more thing for us to care for and sadly, they wilt.

We are genuinely very thankful for the generosity and kindness that our community shows to us, but this Christmas, what we really want is something impactful to help us better treat patients like you and your loved ones.

All we want for Christmas this year is for you to support the NORTH Foundation. Your donation will make a difference to the care we can provide in our hospitals and healthcare facilities.

Please see our Christmas Wish List of things that our colleagues across the district would like this year. By donating to the NORTH Foundation, you can help to fund some of these items – and many others – which will ultimately help us in our treatment of patients. We are here for you when you are ill or hurt and when you need us the most.

On behalf of our colleagues across the NSLHD, we wish you and your loved ones a safe and happy festive season.

Stay safe,

Dr Stella McGinn
Renal Transplant Physician
Royal North Shore Hospital

Jay Halkhoree
Nurse Unit Manager
ICU Hornsby Ku-ring-gai Hospital

Radha Murthi
Head of Nutrition and Dietetics
Ryde Hospital

 

PS We love hearing from you and your messages mean the world to us. I also encourage you to share some Christmas joy with our staff by filling in our ‘messages of thanks’ form here

PPS Please donate today to help us deliver better patient care to you and your loved ones. You can help us bridge the gap between what is needed today and what is possible tomorrow.