A clinic underwater, no power, and ‘a huge amount of anxiety’

It was on Thursday evening that the team at HealthHub Taree walked into a devastating scene – its beloved medical centre inundated with floodwater.
 
Hours earlier, with the rain pouring and the floods looming, the team sandbagged the clinic in preparation of what was coming, but there was nothing they could do to stop the building filling up with 30 centimetres of water.
 
The medical centre is just one of thousands of buildings impacted by the record-breaking and deadly New South Wales floods.
 
As the natural disaster worsened, authorities carried out 805 rescues and responded to more than 16,000 calls for help.
 
Now, with the worst of the flooding clearing, recovery centres are opening, helping those who were living in one of the more than 1000 homes now deemed uninhabitable.
 
The devastating impact of the floods is something Dr Simon Holliday experienced firsthand.
 
A GP at HealthHub Taree, Dr Holliday walked through the clinic on that Thursday night, seeing his workplace filled with dirty water.
 
But soon, it was all hands on deck to get the medical centre back up and running, so its doctors could begin treating a community in need of healthcare.  
 
‘By Friday at 7 o’clock we had a fabulous team of staff, and the partners of staff, and some friends, and people descend on the place,’ Dr Holliday told newsGP.
 
‘We had an army of people to begin cleaning and mopping, the fire brigade helped by hosing out the slightly dirty water.
 
‘We reopened again on Monday, and so a lot of people in the community helped us, a lot of the tradies prioritised us so we could get back on our feet.
 
‘Our motivation really was because we know that there’s not enough doctors in a rural community, and we have 150 people a day come through our surgery, and so we had this real obligation to get there for people.’
 
And once the clinic was back up and running, it was time for its doctors to give back.
 
‘A couple of shops across the car park were also hit, and so when we finished our cleanup, we took mops and lanterns, because there’s no power, and cleaning equipment over to them so they could keep going,’ Dr Holliday said.
 
‘You realise, though, that your problems are only little ones when you talk to other people who have far worse problems.
 
‘It was an enormous effort.’

The cleanup team at HealthHub Taree.
 
For Port Macquarie GP Dr Debra King, who lives 80 kilometres north of Dr Holliday’s Taree clinic, the flooding brought with it a ‘huge amount of anxiety’ among her community, including in many worried patients.
 
‘One patient had a metre of water in her house, her husband is unwell, and she’s having to scrub and clean, and she’s anxious, her joints are playing up because she’s having to do all this cleaning,’ she told newsGP.
 
‘People can’t have their normal medication or their scripts or they can’t access their normal health checks and their normal scripts. That’s a big thing.
 
‘And when I got to work, I had one nurse that was cut off and couldn’t come into work, I had two receptionists and one other doctor, so who’s going to cover those patients?
 
‘Then the phones were going off a lot, because people that wanted to come in couldn’t come in, and then other people needed their scripts because they were isolated.’
 
Dr King said the role of GPs becomes especially important in the days and weeks after a natural disaster, when rattled communities are seeking normality and trusted relationships.
 
‘It’s their regular GP that patients need to see or talk to – that’s really important,’ she said.
 
‘This week, it’s been hard too because people are cleaning up, they’re looking at the damage, and that’s when it’s really tough – there’s that level of anxiety.
 
‘GPs are really important in that week after the flood happens, when the flood waters go down and people are isolated, I think we’re really essential.’
 
The NSW flooding comes as the RACGP has long been calling for GPs’ contribution to natural disaster responses to be better recognised and coordinated.
 
Heatwaves, bushfires, droughts and storms continue to impact communities across Australia – just in recent months North Queensland has experienced destructive floods and regional Victoria a month-long fire-fighting campaign.
 
Last year, the RACGP called on government to formally add GPs to emergency planning regimes as well as releasing a new resource for GPs working in evacuation centres.

The State Emergency Service and fire crews helping with the cleanup effort in Port Macquarie.
 
And while the cleanup in Taree, Port Macquarie, and a long list of devastated communities in the area, is only just beginning, Dr Holliday said there is already much health authorities can learn from this most recent flooding event.
 
‘GPs are advocates for community – we do public health one patient at a time,’ he said.
 
‘While the community might think that healthcare workers are important, I don’t think that there is proper planning and proper coordination given to general practice – this is shocking.
 
‘The government’s got to recognise it has to provide extra support for health services in areas that might be more at risk.
 
‘Let’s make sure that we learn, and we do things better, because we can look after our patients better if we think about things, plan a bit better, and coordinate a bit better.’
 
Dr Holliday added that major changes are needed to insurance procedures to ensure residents can get the help they need.
 
And as he watches his community begin to recover from yet another flood, he sees GPs’ role as one of ‘community caregivers’.
 
‘We can be advocates for our patients in terms of insurance, how we deal with a community in crisis, a community in grief,’ Dr Holliday said.
 
‘People share the grief and pain together, and the loss, and everyone wants to tell their own story.’
 
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