The Col­lab­o­ra­tive Team Award for a team or health ser­vice that has pro­vid­ed an inno­v­a­tive approach to the deliv­ery of health care dur­ing the pan­dem­ic was award­ed to COVID-19 Response and Action Infor­ma­tion Group (CRAIG) at the Top End Health Ser­vice (TEHS).

The TEHS CRAIG team mem­bers are Ruth Derkenne, Kel­ly Hosk­ing, Jane Thomas, Tra­cy Porter and Tere­sa De Santis. 

This team, has worked tire­less­ly since the arrival of the pan­dem­ic in Aus­tralia to pro­duce plans and pro­ce­dures for remote clin­ics to fol­low, and have con­tin­u­al­ly kept up to date with the mul­ti­ple changes that have occurred. 

A major move was to design and devel­op easy to wipe down gowns made of para­chute mate­r­i­al so that health work­ers could prac­tice don­ning and doff­ing whilst not hav­ing to throw away pre­cious PPE, trav­el­ling to remote clin­ics to do this training.

They also cre­at­ed the CRAIG TEHS Pri­ma­ry Health Care newslet­ter, sent out week­ly, now fort­night­ly, updat­ing remote clin­ics with the changes, plans and resources avail­able to them.

In addi­tion, they have helped train and pull togeth­er Rapid Assess­ment and Rapid Response Teams, who are on call to be deployed into remote loca­tions should a 
case of COVID be found.

Team mem­bers have spent count­less nights awake and week­ends at work to devel­op all these things so that remote clin­ics are as best pre­pared as they can be for a pos­i­tive COVID case.

The CRANAplus Col­lab­o­ra­tive Team Award is spon­sored by Remote Area Health Corps (RAHC).