The city is sleeping and a chill lingers in the air at 5am, but a small team of people are already hard at work at Wagga Rural Referral Hospital.
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Long before the patients awake, in a cavernous kitchen that would impress even the most masterful of chefs, staff start preparing 250 breakfasts, which will soon be delivered across several floors as part of an elaborate dance that continues throughout the day.
The scale of the operation is impressive: Every week, the kitchen goes through 510 loaves of bread, 435 litres of milk, 360 chicken thighs and 175 kilograms of mashed potato.
“We pretty much hit the ground running,” food services supervisor Shellie Lawlor says. “It’s all well-timed, but you still have to think on your feet.”
Each patient’s dietary needs are taken into consideration long before the meal trays start getting filled, but the menu is a far cry from the bland hospital food of old.
“I think the food’s good, I’d eat it,” Ms Lawlor laughs. “There’s that old perception of bland and boring but that’s no longer the case – we do chicken curries, beef stroganoff, chicken parmigianas, we’ve really worked on improving the food.”
Specialised equipment like the big “Burlodge pods” – a combination of a fridge and an oven – are used to heat and cool meal trays, ensuring the food is kept at the right temperature until it’s served.
Electric carts called “tugs” tow the pods around the hospital and as soon as all the trays been handed out it’s time to collect all of the empty trays. In the kitchen, another team operates industrial-sized dishwashers, cleaning everything just in time for the whole process to start again.
Just outside the kitchen, the first of several cleaning shifts also begin their day at 5am. They make sure offices and corridors are spick and span, going through 1000 garbage bags a week and replacing 60 rolls of toilet paper, each one 300 metres long.
Environmental services supervisor Lorraine Conlan says cleaners work 21.5 hours a day, from 5am to 2.30am, making sure strict cleanliness standards are maintained.
“We do everything from mopping and vacuuming to dusting and cleaning touch points like door handles,” Ms Conlan says. “There are patient areas and non-patient areas… (and) different priority areas, from priority one for theatres to priority three for offices where there are no procedures (on patients).”
Older visitors might notice the absence of the “hospital smell”, with new cleaning products allowing for the eradication of influenza or gastro bugs without the use of harsh chemicals. The cleaning staff also go through 800-1000 microfibre mop heads every day when they’re not using ride-on machines to clean several kilometres of corridors.
“(The new hospital) is a bigger facility, so we have extra cleaning shifts and linen services every day,” Ms Conlan says. “We’ve got more than 30 cleaners on staff now.”
With all the cleaning going on, it’s critical to keep the hospital’s 10 kilometres of pipework maintained and Wagga has its own plumbers on staff, like 40-year veteran Mick Geale.
“This building is nothing like a regular house,” Mr Geale says as he inspects the top floor plant room, where enormous boilers are used to regulate temperature and provide hot water throughout the hospital.
“We still get the dripping taps and blocked toilets, but we also look after the air and oxygen for the operating theatres, the heating boilers and the water boilers, there’s pipes all through the place.”
Like any tradesman, Mr Geale is a big believer in two things: Preventing problems and telling stories.
“Every day is different, but we go around all of the plant rooms and make sure it’s all working,” he says.
“If you don’t check, it’s like ‘Murphy’s Law’ and it’ll break down the next day. I could write a book about this place, it’s funny some of the things that have happened.”
Pausing to check a small puddle near one of the boilers, Mr Geale says some things had changed quite a lot since he was a young plumber.
“With the computers, if there’s a problem with the heating at West Wyalong we can bring it up from here and see what’s going on,” he says.
“Years ago we’d have to drive two hours there to try and fix it and hope we’d brought the right gear.”
Many of the staff, like Mr Geale and biomedical technician Trevor Hezakie, worked elsewhere before they came to the hospital.
Years ago, Mr Hezakie kept helicopters in the air in the middle of the Bougainville Conflict, as an avionics technician in Papua New Guinea’s military.
Along with his small team of technicians, Mr Hezakie is tasked with maintaining and repairing “anything between the patient and the wall”. And while he can still be called upon at any time of the day or night to repair critical equipment, Mr Hezakie is an old hand at working in tough conditions.
“The most pressure (on the job) was in the air, because you’re flying with the doors open and you don’t know what’s coming at you,” he says.
“There’s pressure here too, when you’re dealing with a life and death situation, but it’s very fulfilling… you know you’re doing something important.”
The warm, friendly man demonstrates how he tests equipment in the emergency department, an important part of making sure things work when they’re needed.
“This is an awesome job for me because I’ve had to deal with situations (in the military) where I had no spare parts – no nothing – and had to fix things,” Mr Hezakie says. “But here if something’s broken I can fix it in about half an hour.”
Even though many of these workers never interact with the public, they’re all aware of the important role they play in keeping the hospital’s doors open. And, as Mr Geale says, it’s not a bad place to spend 40 years.
“I’ve put five children through school, bought two houses and a new car every now and then… this is a pretty good place to work,” Mr Geale says.