General News
25 April, 2023
Electric beds to boost birth unit
A donation from Wimmera Heath Care Group Foundation has enabled Grampians Health Horsham to upgrade the birthing beds in Wimmera Base Hospital's Yandilla maternity unit. Yandilla nurse unit manager and midwife Michelle Coutts said the $60,000...
A donation from Wimmera Heath Care Group Foundation has enabled Grampians Health Horsham to upgrade the birthing beds in Wimmera Base Hospital's Yandilla maternity unit.
Yandilla nurse unit manager and midwife Michelle Coutts said the $60,000 upgrade was an important one for the birthing unit because the previous beds had been in use for around a decade.
“The new beds are fully electronic with a retractable foot section that removes the occupational health and safety risk associated with the previous beds,” Ms Coutts said.
“Before we got these, you had to manually remove the foot end of the bed for birthing and post birth procedures.”
Grampians Health deputy chief operating officer hospitals – west, Carolyn Robertson, said the foundation's donation was another important one.
“We currently have a birth rate of approximately 300 a year at Horsham and it's in the strategic plan to grow that number significantly,” Ms Robertson said.
“We've been increasing our maternity services and adopting a new model of care and we hope to grow the service to provide for up to 400 or more women to birth at Horsham each year.
“The support from the foundation has always been invaluable and we appreciate the work they continue to do for our Horsham and Dimboola campuses."
Other recent boosts for new families have included opening the Maternity Outpatients Clinic in McPherson Street late last year and a new full-time lactation service.