Renal service up and running at Bowral and District Hospital

John McFadden was the first dialysis patient to use the service which began on Monday, July 2.

He said he was glad the service was now available in the Highlands and hoped an expanded service would happen in the not too distant future.

“It’s taken quite some time but it’s finally happening. Makes it hard to take it out now, it’s just getting it expanded to get more people,” he said.

Mr McFadden will use the renal service three times a week, where he will be on the dialysis machine for about five hours each time.

There is currently one chair at Bowral Hospital which will operate three days a week with one patient and with the aim to expand the service to six days.

Bowral and District Hospital general manager Joel Bardsley said one of the key challenges the hospital faced in expanding the service, was staffing and being able to recruit renal nurses.

Two nurses have already been recruited to enable the renal service to begin.

With a new chair and equipment, the service is located in the short stay unit.

Mr Bardsley said it was an exciting first step in bringing renal services back to the area.

“We’re excited that we’ve been able to put dialysis back into the Southern Highlands. The next step is to go back into user group meetings and make some decisions about how we grow it,” he said.

Mr Bardsley said user group meetings happened monthly and included the Southern Highlands Renal; Appeal which had been “excellent throughout this process”.

And with more money recently announced for the hospital redevelopment in the latest state budget, Mr Bardsley said this could prove beneficial for a larger renal unit in the future.

“The $15 million means that the entire emergency department will be part of the scope now. In the new building there’s not space for dialysis but given we’ll have part of the old hospital we’ll look at refurbishing those and making those up to scratch. We just might have to re-purpose.”