Page 2676 - Week 08 - Wednesday, 21 September 2022
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I will not pretend to understand the detail of an IT project of this scale and complexity, but when Minister Davidson says that it looks like one of the most well-managed projects of this nature that she has seen, I am impressed. I wish ACT Health all the best in rolling it out.
Even with systems in place, and committed and professional clinicians, it is important that our health systems are always striving to improve and to find and fix any flaws. Perfection may well be an impossible ideal, but the constant journey for our public health services to be the best they can be is a noble mission, and it is something we must resource.
I support Minister Stephen-Smith’s amendments, particularly the commitment to a Child and Adolescent Clinical Services Expert Panel, and the ongoing rollout of recommendations and improvements from the CHS Paediatric Organisation and Service Plan 2021-2023.
It needs courage to look at the most tragic of outcomes in our health system and to ask what we could have done better. Everyone in our health workforce and everyone in our community wants to have confidence that our hospital is able to provide the right care for every person who walks through the door needing help.
For our hardworking doctors and nurses and our hospital management, to hear that they could have done better is really challenging. But these are the conversations and the processes that we need to have, and they take dedication and time. They are necessary for our community to have the public health system that it deserves.
Being able to sit with hard truths, to look critically at what we do and how we do it, to listen deeply and without presumption to those who have been left feeling hurt by the failures of this system, and to those who have been tragically wounded and will never recover, is an important step in our growth. It requires every participant in the process to come to the conversation in good faith with a shared commitment to making things better. The next step in the journey is to put in place actions that make real and lasting change.
I want to say, on behalf of all of us: this is the worst thing that can happen. Most of us have walked that journey with someone, and some of us have had that loss. I cannot imagine how it must feel right now.
The Greens are supporting the minister’s amendments.
MS CASTLEY (Yerrabi) (3.59): The question that I am asking today is: do we have the best early warning system for our kids? After listening to the minister, I really do not have any more confidence now than I did before she spoke that the early warning system with one spike in a vital sign, as was recommended by the AMA and other paediatricians, is in place. I keep hearing about the group and that there are lots of things going on. We need a simple system. We need a simple system that parents have an assurance will work. It is what the minister needs to do to reassure Canberra parents that we have the best system in place.
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