Kate Goodwin, who lives in Point Cook, is the chief executive officer and director of nursing of the future St Vincent’s Private Hospital Werribee, which is being built in Hoppers Lane. She gives Star Weekly an insight into the project.
What do you enjoy most about your role at St Vincent’s Private?
St Vincent’s Private is a fantastic organisation to work for, they are faith-based and so are grounded in those values of compassion, justice, integrity and excellence. It’s great to be able to see those in action and shape those from the ground up in a new project. It’s a big responsibility, but it’s very exciting to help shape that culture.
Can you tell us about the progress of the hospital project?
It’s actually a hospital and an aged care service, which are on the same site, but are run by two different divisions of St Vincent’s Health Australia, which I don’t think many people know. The aged care building is finished and they will be taking their first patients as of next week.
When will the hospital open?
We hope to open in the last quarter of this year and we will deliver our first babies in February 2018. When the hospital opens we will have 49 beds, three operating theatres and a catheterisation laboratory, which is where you get cardiac studies done that are non-invasive. It’s quite exciting actually because currently people in Werribee need to travel out of the area to either Footscray, Geelong or over the bridge to access these services.
What other medical services will be based at the hospital?
The hospital will be a bit of everything to everyone. It will have orthopaedics, urology, general surgery, ear, nose and throat services, sleep studies, rehabilitation and oncology services. Of course we will also have a busy maternity service supported by our special care nursery.
