Page 2967 - Week 09 - Wednesday, 12 October 2022
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consolidated to provide safer care—has gone down over time and is continuing to go down is a clear indication that we have not walked away from this space, and that when it can safely be used it will safely be used to support children, young people and their families.
We do recognise that it is much better for children to be in a space that is friendly for them, that is family friendly. That is why, in the development and design of the critical services building, which will have a larger emergency department, new and specifically designed, the team has worked with consumers and clinical user groups to include an enhanced paediatric treatment area, an expanded paediatric waiting area and even a courtyard to ensure that children and families are comfortable while they are waiting for emergency treatment. This is something that we take very seriously, that we think is really important, but it is not more important than providing safe care.
In terms of the emergency department more broadly, in the 2021-22 budget we invested $23 million in the Canberra Hospital emergency department to expand the capacity of the emergency department to better respond to service demand pressures and to support contemporary models of care. Funding through this initiative provided for expansion of the current emergency medical unit, additional medical and nursing workforce and development of an acute medical unit, as part of our continued service improvements in the emergency department, to which we remain committed.
So I thank Ms Castley for giving me the opportunity to highlight the improvements that ACT Labor continues to make in our emergency care. I again reassure her—and I need to continually repeat myself because Ms Castley seems to not hear when we say things—that the decision to reduce the ED footprint was to ensure the safest environment for patients and our health workforce.
This is a decision that is made by senior ED clinicians, nursing and medical, and their ED leadership. This is not a decision that is made by the health minister. It would be absolutely inappropriate for me, as health minister, to be second-guessing the emergency department leadership and the clinicians, nursing and medical, on the floor, when they are determining how to ensure that the safest care can be given to children and young people. These decisions are made on a shift-by-shift basis—that is, every eight hours—as to where patients need to be cared for to maintain that safe environment.
Over the winter period, when we know that our hospital, like every other hospital across the country, has been experiencing staffing pressures, paediatric patients have been seen in either fast-track or acute areas of the ED rather than in the paediatric space. These decisions are not made on the whim of an executive. They are not made by me. They are not made by the CEO. They are made by clinicians, because the health services take seriously their role in providing exceptional care to our community. These decisions are based on the current patients in the ED at the time, the demand across the various streams, the staffing skill mix and the predicted presentation for the upcoming shift.
These decisions always aim to minimise the time that these arrangements are in place, for all the reasons that Ms Castley has talked about regarding the value of that space. We absolutely recognise that. Of course we will get back to that operating 100 per
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