December 27, 2024#WeAreNorthern
Meet Mary Mackie-Low, Emergency Mental Health Team Leader.
Q: Firstly, what is your coffee order?
A: Large flat white, weak but very hot.
Q: Tell me about your role?
A: There are variety of components to the Emergency Mental Health, Consultation Liaison Psychiatry, Northern Police Ambulance Clinician Emergency Response Team Leader.
Supporting the EMH Program Manager, empowering, supporting, providing governance and supervision for the EMH multidisciplinary team. Liaising and supporting the ED, wider hospital staff, and hospital flow. Facilitating referrals from the community, ED arrivals from the forensic systems and assessments in the ED.
Providing weekly education with Mental Health and Wellbeing Act with regards to restrictive intervention. Rostering, updating policy’s procedures, facilitating and attending various meetings, the list goes on.
Q: What do you enjoy most about your work?
A: I enjoy supporting, empowering EMH multidisciplinary teams.
I love that EMH, CL psychiatry, NPACER Team Leader roles are very challenging. Mental Health is a fast-paced environment, with no two days the same. You need to be super organised and a very good ‘juggler’, at times all your balls, clubs, knives and flaming torches are in the air at the one time!!
It’s extremely rewarding when all the puzzle pieces come together, with support of the EMH staff, Mental Health IPU and the Community Teams across the Mental Health Division, to ensure that patients in our care, receive the right care, at the right time in the right place.
Q: What is your favourite movie, and why?
A: Pretty Woman. I’m a sucker for a love story, with a knight on a white horse that saves the princess from a tower. Who doesn’t like looking at Richard Gere!
Q: What is someplace you have always wanted to travel to?
A: Although I have travelled extensively, this year I have been to Vietnam, with pending holidays booked later this year to both Airlie Beach and India. I still have an extensive bucket list. In 2025, I plan to either visit Japan or Canada and Alaska.
