NEW allied health professionals were welcomed to the recently opened sub-acute ward at Moruya Hospital on Monday.
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A speech pathologist and an occupational therapist have been recruited for the new facility and will provide rehabilitation services on the South Coast.
New South Wales Rural Doctors Network (RDN) helped with the recruitment and manager Dave Karlson said it was a coup for the region.
“Health professionals were expressing how financially and emotionally difficult it would be to relocate from the city to Moruya,” he said.
“RDN offered assistance to alleviate these obstacles.”
RDN recruit Lesley Hart, an Occupational Therapist, has moved with her husband to Moruya and started in her new role on Monday.
'We want to create something special'
Mrs Hart moved from Alice Springs to take the position and was enjoying her first week in the job.
“It is a huge transition,” she said.
“Alice is beautiful in its own way but you don’t understand remote until you are somewhere like that, the nearest major hospital is 1500 kilometres away.
“It is really important and a big thing for Moruya patients to be able to stay local.”
Mrs Hart said it was a lovely facility and looked forward to creating a high quality unit.
“There is room to do the things you need to do in rehab and often hospitals don’t have that,” she said.
“Starting a new unit is something really exciting.
“You often have to just fit in, but here we can create it the way we want.
“I have got the impression, just after a few days, that we all want to create something special and make it a really good, high quality unit.”
Miriam Staker, who leads speech pathology services for the Southern NSW Local Health District was excited to recruit Virginia Agosti, a speech pathologist from Sydney who has moved to Moruya.
“Virginia is passionate about rehabilitation and we are very excited to have her working for the people of Eurobodalla,” she said.
Ms Agosti has been at the new unit for a month and said everyone in the community and hospital had been welcoming.
“I am already part of the soccer team and I did clean up Australia day," she said.
“It is great to have this service out here.
“I feel it is something that has been welcomed.
"It has been lacking.”