Keeping healthy - Bendigo Community Health Service

Share The Dignity #Pinkbox machine installed at our Bendigo Women's Health Clinic

We're pretty proud to team up with Share the Dignity to offer free #Pinkbox period packs to the community from a new dispensing machine installed this week at our Women's Health Clinic at the Central site in Hargreaves Street.

Each pack contains six tampons and two pads.

The machines are put in place by Share The Dignity to ensure that everyone is afforded the dignity so many of us take for granted. What a great initiative.

You can visit our Central site at 165-171 Hargreaves Street during business hours.

Free sanitary products are also available from our Eaglehawk site at 3 Seymoure Street and Kangaroo Flat site at 19 Helm Street.

It's all part of our commitment to women's health and supporting everyone in our community.

Big thanks to Share The Dignity for supporting us with this endeavour - keep up the great work.

Thanks to Gus from C2Electrical for a great job in getting the new machine onto the wall so fast and running smoothly.

Learn more about our Women's Health Clinic and Women's Sexual and Reproductive Health Hub at www.bchs.com.au or by calling 5448 1600.

#BCHS #thereforyou

Last updated: May 2019.

International Nurses Day: Let's meet Louise Holland from our Women's Health Clinic

Today is International Nurses Day. A time to pay thanks to all the wonderful nurses out there who make a difference to the lives of the people they care for every day.

UPDATE: Meet Alcohol and Other Drugs team community health nurse Sheenah Van Eck click here

UPDATE: Meet Sexual Health Clinic community health nurse Rebekah Ryan click here

UPDATE: Meet Bendigo Multidisciplinary Centre community health nurse Liz Morley click here

ORIGINAL POST: International Nurses Day is celebrated across the world on May 12 – the anniversary of Florence Nightingale’s birth.

We’re fortunate to have some wonderful nurses working at Bendigo Community Health Services to support clients in a variety of services and programs.

In recognition of International Nurses Day and the great work they do, we’d like to introduce some of these nurses to you over the next week and talk to them about what makes their career special.

Let’s start with Louise Holland from our Women’s Health Clinic and Women’s Sexual and Reproductive Health Hub.

Louise is a nurse practitioner candidate and clinical nurse consultant.

How long have you been a nurse?

34 years and 30 as a midwife

Why did nursing appeal to you in the beginning?

I really wanted to be a PE teacher, but could not afford to go to uni and nursing in 1981 paid $90 per week! Once I found midwifery … that was my calling.

What is the most rewarding thing about being a nurse?

The privilege to be part of the educational, healing, growth of people’s lives as they face a health issue.

Tell us a story from your nursing career that made you cry?

Bendigo Community Coat Drive launched with help from football and netball clubs

Bendigo Community Health Services is calling on people to scour their cupboards and draws to support the 2019 Bendigo Community Coat Drive from May 6.

AFL Central Victoria is supporting the drive in 2019 with football and netball captains visiting Pristine Dry Cleaners in High Street on Tuesday to help launch the campaign with manager Jane Townsend and Bendigo Community Health Services chief executive officer Gerard Jose.

The 2019 Bendigo Community Coat Drive runs from May 6 to May 25.

Pristine Dry Cleaners will clean every donated item free of charge.

Bendigo Community Health Services received more than 1400 donations last year.

BCHS CEO Gerard Jose said the coat drive supported people in the community forced to go cold every winter because they didn’t have the means to buy a warm coat.

“There are people in the community forced to make decisions every week about whether to spend the limited money they have on food, heating or rent – they simply don’t have the means to buy a new coat for themselves or their children to get through winter,” Mr Jose said.

Can you help? See the list of donation drop off points below