Page 228 - Week 01 - Thursday, 13 February 2020
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difficult to fit and use appropriately; therefore, they were not recommended for use in the general community as an alternative to avoiding outdoor smoke exposure.
The challenges the smoke presented also extended to our hospitals and health staff, and all of those who needed to continue working through this event. In response, Canberra Health Services rolled out a range of measures to support and inform staff, including packs to minimise the impact of smoke and regular briefings for staff. The CEO of Canberra Health Services, Bernadette McDonald, held daily briefings for staff to update them on the state of alert and state of emergency and what CHS was doing to support staff. This meant that during the period all outpatient and community services continued as planned and patients with queries were provided with support to decide whether to attend their clinic or to reschedule.
Our health services were also there to support those who were impacted by the smoke. While there was not a significant rise in presentations, there is no doubt that the support of our health workers served to reduce anxiety and concern across the community.
During this event, on 7 January I received advice from Calvary Public Hospital that since Christmas Day around 30 patients reported at triage that smoke had influenced or dictated their presentation at their emergency department. Interestingly, they reported that a significant number of those people were stating anxiety as their primary reason for presentation, not an impact of the air quality on their physical wellbeing. I am pleased that both Minister Rattenbury and Mrs Dunne have recognised the significant impact of the smoke event on people’s mental health.
Minister Rattenbury talked about the fact that this event meant that people were constantly checking the air monitoring updates, constantly checking readings from stations, constantly checking their social media, and checking in with one another. Being cooped up at home, people were on social media a lot. I think there is some work to do to think about how we support people, without being patronising, by giving them good advice about how to manage their anxiety in those situations. When you know the smoke is bad outside, when you know you are going to be cooped up inside, maybe the advice we give people is, “Turn off your social media for a couple of hours.” I know the Chief Health Officer mentioned that a few times. “Don’t look at the constant updates. Read a book. Play a board game. Watch a movie.” There is nothing you can actually do about those readings, but there is maybe something you can do about the mental health impacts of the situation.
I think that one of the reasons the anxiety was so great was our inability to predict when the smoke was coming and going. The Deputy Chief Minister, as Acting Chief Minister, and I experienced this when we were making a decision about what to do with the New Year’s Eve celebrations. New Year’s Eve dawned clear and bright. It was not windy, and it was not smoky. But we knew the wind was coming and we knew the smoke was coming. We had to make a decision about when we would make a decision about New Year’s Eve and when we would tell people what that decision was.
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