PA Hospital's Food Services Department is serving up new safety and efficiency measures in 2026, thanks to a Hotspot Manual Tasks Risk Management program.
Operational Officer and Health and Safety Representative Zoey Murray led the effort, bringing more than a decade of experience and a passion for safety improvement initiatives to the project.
Throughout the project, Zoey’s exemplary leadership inspired department-wide enthusiasm and input.
“I want to make my work safer for everyone, and that is a continuous goal that I feel is shared by everyone in our workplace,” Zoey said.
From coordinating monthly meetings and identifying hazards, to synthesizing feedback and liaising with stakeholders, Zoey and the team worked closely to deliver practical solutions to existing challenges across Food Services.
“We talked with our departments, staff—everyone had a voice in shaping our process. Together, we put over 100 years of experience in that room,” Zoey said.
Staff from across the department contributed their experience, challenges and solutions to inform the changes, which would deliver safer manual handling practices, more robust training, and a safer work environment.
“Our team was made up of management and staff from across food and nutritional services, to review our existing workplace procedures and come up with new strategies to solve outstanding issues within our current workflow,” Zoey explained.
“We collaborated monthly, identifying high-risk procedures in our departments such as repetitive strain injuries from equipment with unergonomic designs and misaligned heights, slipping hazards in the walk-in freezer, and gaps in specialised training.”
Zoey says the success of the project was written in the team’s shared vision and support along the way, from frontline staff to management.
“Every single one of [our staff members] has been working hard to improve our workplace. It was a fantastic opportunity to work beside them,” she said.
“Budget plays a large role in being able to access safe equipment and deliver improved training for workplaces. We had a supportive management team that worked quickly to approve the necessary budget to implement meaningful and safe change in our workplace.”
From introducing more ergonomical equipment to expanding storage space, the team worked together to deliver safe and efficient solutions to support the department’s evolving needs.
With the changes in full motion, Zoey is embracing her next project: the PA Hospital Kitchen expansion.
Set to accommodate four new floors above the existing Emergency Department and 249 additional patient beds, Zoey and her team have hit the ground running to deliver a bigger and better service for the growing hospital.
Watch this space for updates as the PA Hospital Expansion progresses.