Response to the SARS-CoV-2 Virus

B. Braun Australia and New Zealand is a family-owned global healthcare company with a vision to “protect and improve the health of people around the world”. When the Covid-19 pandemic began to spread across the globe it was a call-to-action for our entire organisation. As in any time of uncertainty, we had to act fast to minimise disruption to our services, our employees, our partners and patients.

Answering customers’ needs The real heroes in this crisis are the healthcare professionals, so our priority was to ensure that they had all the necessary supplies. We increased stock levels of critical products and worked closely with our regional and global manufacturing plants to coordinate increases in production capacity and reinforce our logistics solutions. In some instances, we had to fast-track the supply of critical lines to meet the increased demand. As the Covid-19 situation evolved, and as panic buying became apparent, we implemented a robust rationing system to ensure that supply to contracted customers would not be impacted.

B. Braun Australia and New Zealand also actively contributed to MTAA industry workgroup (ICU), government authorities and the AHK to coordinate supplies and help to ensure Australia would not run out of stock of critical product lines. At the end of March, we all witnessed the dramatic situation that was unfolding in Italy with hundreds of people dying daily and a shortage of pharmaceuticals. In response to this, we decided to divert a shipment of life-saving drugs that were manufactured for Australia and fast-track them to Italy. The Italian authorities agreed to accept Midazolam with Australian labels to help save Italian lives. Answering patients’ needs B. Braun Australia and New Zealand is also a global provider of renal care services and products, under the name B. Braun Australia and New Zealand Avitum. The company operates more than 380 renal care centres worldwide, with four centres in Australia and one in New Zealand. Our renal care nurses are at the frontline in the provision of life-sustaining treatment for our patients. These patients, due to multiple high-risk comorbidities, are more likely to have severe complications and higher mortality from COVID-19 than patients free from kidney disease. As the coronavirus pandemic started to emerge and cause major healthcare issues around the world, B. Braun Australia and New Zealand management and clinical teams in Australia, worked closely with our headquarters in Germany and global counterparts and immediately implemented the company Infection Prevention Pandemic Plan. This plan took a comprehensive approach to mitigate the infection risk, including increased security and entry restriction into our renal care centres; triage screening before entry into treatment areas; infection prevention education for patients and nurses; and influenza vaccinations for patients and nurses. We increased communication with local health departments to ensure alignment with Australian and New

Zealand best practice guidelines and developed a road map to be implemented if a patient or nurse presented with acute respiratory symptoms.

Answering employees’ needs Our employees are what makes this company great. We feel responsible for them and their safety. To ensure this we established a COVID-19 Committee that met daily to respond to new challenges and make and alter any business arrangements as required. This was to ensure all areas of the business were considered in all challenges, decisions and announcements.

Before the Australian Government’s directions had been introduced, we advised all our employees to work from home. We adapted to the new way of working very quickly, and it is fair to say that our IT team was busier than ever, ensuring all our devices and network connections were functioning correctly. However, for other areas, such as Customer Service, Supply Chain and Aesculap Technical Services, working from home wasn’t an option. We introduced shifts to minimise physical contact. Whilst this was a significant change to the workforce, transitions were smooth and the workforce remained positive. The mental health of our employees is not something we take lightly, and in times like this, we had to make sure that everyone felt supported. A ‘Tips and Tricks’ folder and weekly newsletter were developed for leaders to assist in how to support their staff through the change and what they could do to ease the anxiety of their teams who were working from home.

The destination: the transformation of work and workplace Within a very short period, we found ourselves in a new environment of working and communicating. Working from home shifted from a sporadic occurrence to the new norm in just a few days. Despite the local separation our teamwork and collaboration grew by living our common values and culture. Sharing expertise is an integral part of B. Braun Australia and New Zealand’s DNA. We had been delivering education and training to our customers in person, in hospital settings. The new reality forced us to rethink this approach, as our educators were not allowed to enter hospitals and clinics. With the use of technology, we conducted several live online trainings, and we increased the number of our instructional videos in a very short time. We have reached more people in the last 2 months with the training initiatives than we would usually reach in one year and this is continuing.

The new normal also challenged the idea that work should be performed in a specific location. Using technology, digitising some or all work, enabled us to do what we do best. It transformed our way of communicating with our colleagues, made us focus on creativity and problemsolving. After Covid-19 we feel even more obliged to support dynamic work locations to maintain our work-life balance.

We learned that we, as a company and as individuals, are resilient. We responded swiftly to the new “normal” and will come out of this stronger, better equipped, and with the peace of mind that again we protected and improved the health of people around the world.

Provided by B. Braun Australia and New Zealand