The new Shepparton Private Hospital chief executive was born, bred and battle-tested in Greater Shepparton.
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Brett Walters was born in Katandra West and still lives there now.
He went to high school in Shepparton before studying nursing at Dookie College.
He’s spent the majority of his 27 years as a nurse in Shepparton, which he believes has given him important insight.
“I know what it means to live in Shepparton,” Mr Walters said.
“And I know what it means to be a nurse.”
Mr Walters worked in the emergency department at GV Health for about 15 years and managed the department from 2000 to 2011.
He moved on to managing a surgical ward before working in patient safety, quality improvement, innovation and redesign, clinical risk and investigation, all in local healthcare spaces.
He joined the Shepparton Private Hospital team as a unit manager in 2016 before managing community nursing for GV Health and the West Hume region for six years.
Mr Walters became the North-West Victoria testing co-ordinator during the COVID-19 pandemic.
He said he would get phone calls at 3am and be asked to be in a town two hours later to set up a testing tent.
“I had multiple teams, from the South Australian border to the Albury border,” he said.
“We were just trying to be as efficient as possible.
“I think at one point we did nearly 13,000 tests in a day here, in Shepparton.”
Mr Walters has been in the chief executive role at Shepparton Private Hospital for about seven weeks.
He said his focus was to push the hospital forward into the post-COVID world.
Mr Walters said the stress the pandemic caused to so many nurses and healthcare workers had left many re-evaluating their career options.
He said the Shepparton Private Hospital had downsized in recent years from its clinical work, and with a crop of new nurses starting, he was excited to get it back up and running to its full capacity.
“We have a lot of people go to Melbourne for surgeries,” he said.
“We have surgeons here.
“We have good surgeons here, good technicians, good physicians.
“We have them available locally, both in the public and private sector.”
The hospital offers all sorts of services, from just about every kind of surgery to rehabilitation services, general medical support, palliative care and one of the only private regional mental health wards in the state.
With support from Ramsay Health Care, the biggest private health provider in the country, and the ever-evolving healthcare space with technology making surgeries and services easier and more efficient all the time, Mr Walters said the opportunities at the Shepparton Private Hospital were endless.
He emphasised how much Greater Shepparton needed a high-functioning public healthcare system, and that a high-functioning public healthcare system required a high-functioning private healthcare system to support it.
“I’ve lived here all my life, born and bred,” he said.
“I still live here with my wife and four kids.
“My parents are here, my relatives, my wife’s relatives.
“I’m one of four brothers, and we all still live in the region.”
Mr Walters said the hospital was hiring talented healthcare workers from overseas to join the team.
He said his knowledge of the region meant he truly understood how much Shepparton benefited from its diversity and how that was reflected in the hospital’s patients and staff.
Beyond just that, he said his decades of experience as a nurse and healthcare worker informed his management style and allowed him to support his staff as much as possible.
“You spend more time with your co-workers than you do with your family once you factor in eight hours of sleep a day,” Mr Walters said.
“So they really become your second family.
“You share experience in nursing and work closely in a team.
“You have to have that empathy and want to help people, because you deal with people at their most vulnerable.
“Nursing is a science, but there’s a real art form in caring for people.
“Nursing is fun; it’s so rewarding.
“It’s challenging as hell, but you’re not alive unless you’re challenged.
“And when you’re born and bred, you do know a lot of people who come through those doors.
“So you’re caring for family and friends, sometimes, or friends of friends.”
With the Shepparton Private Hospital caring for about 10,000 patients a year, Mr Walters said he was driven to provide the best possible care and service.
If you are interested in a nursing role at the Shepparton Private Hospital, email the Ramsay Victorian nurse selector Rebecca Morton: MortonR@ramsayhealth.com.au
Cadet journalist