General Surgery

• Barwon Best Care Awards 2023 Winner Personal Care Award: “Working Towards Work Life Balance in General Surgery”.
• A/Prof Sonal Nagra received The Richard Hallowes Prize, awarded to the doctor considered an outstanding clinical teacher.
• A/Prof Sonal Nagra received the Hasan Al-Khayyat prize, awarded to the doctor who best embodies Dr. Al-Khayyat’s values of empathy, diligence, clinical acumen, collegiality, and compassion.
• A/Prof Sonal Nagra received the 2023 Geelong Clinical School Outstanding Clinician -Teacher Year 3.
• PhD completion:
  • Dr Wendy Crebbin: Teaching Junior Doctors: How experts think: What impact does it have?
  • Dr Amelia McGuinnes, PhD by Research, Deakin University: Effect of bowel prep for colonoscopy on intestinal microbiota
• Master of Surgical Research completion:
  • Dr Louis Scarrold, Characterising the impact of sarcopenia on Colorectal Surgical Outcomes
  • Dr Hamish Morgan, Geelong Ventral Hernia Repair Audit
  • Dr Anh Vu, Implementation of robotic-assisted surgery within a regional centre in Australia: has this changed our practice and what can we expect moving
  • Dr Henry Drysdale, The Impact of COVID-19 on General Surgery in Geelong
  • Dr John Kefalianos, An evaluation of the Australia and New Zealand Emergency Laparotomy Audit (ANZELA)

The response to the coronavirus disease 2019 pandemic required conserving capacity and resources to avoid the health sector being overwhelmed.

To assess Barwon Health’s general surgery response and outcomes, data was collected to compare the first 7 weeks of service delivery during the COVID-19 pandemic (30 March to 17 May 2020) to the corresponding 7 weeks in 2019 (1 April 2019 to 19 May 2019). The study found that:

• Elective general surgery decreased by 45.9% but an essential service was maintained by substantially increasing our public in private operating to perform 81 cases.
• Despite a 30% decrease in emergency department presentations, general surgery admissions decreased only 6.1% while emergency operations increased 13.9%.
• Telehealth was used to conduct 81.3% of outpatient appointments and 61.8% of pre‐operative anaesthetic reviews.
• No significant differences were found for overall surgical outcomes, including appendicectomy and laparotomy.
• Operative exposure for trainees was maintained.

These results show that Geelong was able to provide a safe and effective general surgery service during the first 7 weeks of the coronavirus disease 2019 pandemic. There are some valuable lessons which could be adopted elsewhere in the event of a surge or second wave of cases.

Project Team: Prof Glenn Guest, Mr Simon Crowley, Dr Henry Drysdale, Dr Will Anderson, Dr Pia Bernardi, Dr Tess Asgill, Dr Elliot Bowden, Dr Jesse Cole, Dr Jordy Dangen, Dr Steve Lau, Dr Ellen McMahon, Dr Yit Leang, Dr Eileen Mary Moore, Mr Sonal Nagra, Dr Sally Ooi, Dr Bushra Othman, Dr Matthew Shears, Dr Sam Pellegrino, A/Prof Douglas Stupart, Dr Kirk Underwood, Prof David Watters.