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Meet 2020 Collaborative Team Award Recipients, CRAIG TEHS Primary Health Care

5 Dec 2020

The COVID-19 Response and Action Information Group (CRAIG) at the Top End Health Service (TEHS) has worked tirelessly since the arrival of the pandemic in Australia to produce plans and procedures for remote clinics to follow.

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).