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Dear <<First Name>>
Welcome to 2022. Unfortunately, COVID is still presenting issues for us and we currently are under a suspension of elective surgery. RACS is working towards developing a process with government to bring elective surgery back.
RACS would strongly recommend that a blanket ban is not applied, but that a nuanced approach is taken to match recommencing elective surgery in each health service and hospital, depending on staff resources, PPE and bed resources. As the wave recedes, private hospital COVID admissions should be stopped to free up private resources to do complex elective surgery, including public cases needing critical care beds.
Lastly the colleges produced guidelines two years ago about the resumption of elective surgery for hospitals that have been severely impacted. Commencing with least complex elective surgery (e.g. day surgery) is preferable but for other hospitals that have been less impacted more rapid resumption can occur.
On other matters, we are looking for everyone to attend the upcoming International Women’s Day event to be held on Saturday 12 March 2022 at Customs House. It promises to be a great event for networking and learning about the College advancing the diversity agenda. I also want to draw your attention to the upcoming Election for the Queensland State Committee. There will be a few vacancies and I encourage people to nominate to become part of this important Committee. I personally will finish my term as Chair in early May and I look forward to advocate issues relating to our Fellowship during my tenure on College Council. However, more importantly than nominating for the Committee, voting for Committee members ensures you have input into who represents you, within the College, to government and other external bodies.
We all hope that 2022 is a much easier year than we’ve seen in the last few years!
Professor Deborah Bailey
Chair Queensland State Committee
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