The Royal Melbourne Hospital

Peter’s daughter Shantelle has bravely battled cancer, and he has decided to do Dry July in her honour. Shantelle was treated at Royal Melbourne Hospital, so when Shantelle asked her dad to go Dry in July to raise funds for Royal Melbourne Hospital, he immediately said 'No worries, I can do that'.

“Shantelle is my inspiration. After everything she has been through with her treatment, giving up beer is not a big thing.”

By raising funds this Dry July, Peter is helping The Royal Melbourne Hospital continue to provide the best possible care for their cancer patients.

“My strategies?”, said Peter. “Tie my hands behind my back, don’t visit anyone and just drink coke and water.

“Seriously, it’s not the end of the world to give up beer for a month. She had to give up so much, including donuts! I can do it.”

All good things come…Finally the roof-top garden has been opened and is available to patients at Haematology and Bone Marrow Transplant ward at Royal Melbourne Hospital. Over $250,000 in funds raised by Dry July participants went into this beautiful and calming facility.

This space allows our patients’ and their families to connect with nature and the great outdoors, to give their thoughts and minds some respite, and to encourage a sense of community, in a place that is away from home.

On behalf of the staff and patients at The Royal Melbourne Hospital, thank you so much for the grant for the oncolology telemedicine room. The project is now complete.

The telehealth team were honoured to be offered the opportunity to facilitate innovation of care delivery for oncology outpatients through funding from the Dry July Foundation. 

With the generous support of the Dry July donation we have been able to purchase several key pieces of infrastructure to enable easy access to videoconferencing for our oncology patients.

In addition to telehealth being available in every outpatient room, the oncology team can also perform multidisciplinary meetings in their usual group meeting rooms via videoconference. Professor Kate Drummond (brain cancer surgeon) and Dr Kathryn Field( medical oncologist) have been our lead clinical champions in tele-oncology.

Through their contributions we have successfully saved cancer patients travel time and costs.

We look forward to promoting increased utilisation of telehealth capabilities in oncology.

We are grateful to the Dry July Foundation for assisting us in this journey.

Your support and commitment to The Royal Melbourne Hospital is so invaluable to us and we thank you again!   

Ward 7B is a 32 bed ward providing cancer services at The Royal Melbourne Hospital. 

On behalf of the staff and patients at The Royal Melbourne Hospital, we just wish to say a huge thank you for your support for Ward 7B in the 2017 Dry July campaign. We were absolutely thrilled to receive these funds and have attached below some feedback from the ward.

Couches: Thank you for your support in gathering funds to support our patients, families and ward environment. The couches for the patients' family room will provide seating for patients and families at the end of the corridor where there is a view over Parkville and the family room for time out for patients. This will create a lovely space on the ward.

Clocks: The clocks were recommended to us by a patient. The ones that were purchased are different in each of the rooms and silent. The patients are very happy with this as they can often minimum of 3 weeks as an inpatient in their rooms.

Sit Stand desk: The sit stand desk is to support patients who are receiving treatment and working. It is a table that can be adjusted as a work station and is easy to clean so other patients can use. It fits a small computer or laptop.

Recliners: The recliners have provided so much comfort and support for patients. These a designed to also reduce pressure injuries. Patients when they are unwell, are able to still sit out of bed in these chairs and can easily be transferred back to bed.

Your support and commitment to The Royal Melbourne Hospital is so invaluable to us and we thank you again! We look forward to updating you again in due course.

Royal Melbourne Hospital used Dry July funding toward the refurbishment of the Palliative Care Ward. A number of day care services were relocated, freeing up space in the ward which was converted into an additional 4 single rooms, dramatically increasing services.