Stocking your hospital to be ready on day one

One of the important pieces of behind the scenes work that goes into preparing a new hospital to open is stocking storerooms with medical equipment so everything is ready to go. 

At Footscray Hospital we’ve got 233 storerooms to stock, which is a big job that takes lots of planning – not to mention physically stocking all of these rooms in preparation for opening. 

From dressings to disposable gloves to crutches and resistance exercise bands, there are more than 10,500 different product types that will be stocked at new Footscray Hospital. 

Kim is an Operational Readiness Lead in the new Footscray Hospital project team who is responsible for making sure that each of these items has its own place. 

“When I first started this role and I was told that I was going to be responsible for stocking the store rooms and learned quite how many there were, I was almost overwhelmed,” Kim says. 

"We've worked very closely with each of the operational areas to make sure that we've mapped what items need to go into which rooms and even down to the point of which items go in which bays.” 

Kim says she’s most excited about what the storerooms in the Perioperative Services Precinct will look like in the new hospital. 

"I'm really excited to see what is a multitude of different store rooms in current Footscray Hospital all coming into one big store room where the theatre nurses can basically take their case carts and go shopping,” Kim says. 

Lumi has worked in the Footscray Hospital Theatre for 20 years and has been part of the stocking team.  

“I’m feeling really proud of where we've come,” Lumi says. 

“It takes a great team of people with great knowledge to actually map this space out and get it ready for day one.” 

“The staff and the patients really deserve this building. 

"It’s going to be able to accommodate not only today, but the future of surgery that's coming through. 

“It's very exciting.”