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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2000 Week 9 Hansard (5 September) . . Page.. 2863 ..

QUESTIONS WITHOUT NOTICE

Canberra Hospital-Emergency Department

MR STANHOPE: Mr Speaker, my question is to the Minister for Health and Community Care.

Ms Carnell: What happened to the grass?

MR STANHOPE: It is not there, actually. I understand that, after it was painted to disguise its colour, it was mulched.

MR SPEAKER: Order! If the question is to the Minister for Health and Community Care, it may be about grass.

MR STANHOPE: That happened at enormous cost to the ACT taxpayer. That is my understanding of what happened to the grass; hence the touch of self-interest in my question.

MR SPEAKER: It depends on the type of grass you are speaking of, Mr Stanhope.

MR STANHOPE: Mr Speaker, my question is to the Minister for Health and Community Care. Can the minister confirm that the emergency department at the Canberra Hospital is currently handling up to 180 patients each day? How many nurses are on duty in the department each day to cope with this demand and what was the nursing staff level in the department 12 months ago? What initiatives, if any, has the minister taken to ease the stress caused by the inevitable anger and verbal abuse from disgruntled patients directed at nurses?

MR MOORE: I am delighted to have this question; it is just the opportunity I was looking for. Mr Speaker, you may be aware that the emergency department at the Canberra Hospital is part of the whole trauma service, and the Canberra Hospital is the very first hospital in Australia to have its trauma service accredited. I would like to acknowledge the work that goes on in a full range of areas in the emergency department at the Canberra Hospital. That fits in with what happened only a few weeks earlier when the hospital as a whole received full-year accreditation and was rated amongst the best hospitals in Australia, which was very exciting.

There is no doubt that there has been extra pressure on the emergency section. I have been aware of that pressure for some time. I approached not only the hospital management but also Professor Drew Richardson, who runs the emergency section. Having had a number of requests for extra staffing and extra funding for the emergency section, I said to him, "Put the evidence before me so that I know what it is that has happened in terms of putting increased pressure on the emergency section."

Some evidence was finally presented to us on the Friday before last, about 10 days ago. It so happened that on the very same Friday that the information came into the department I was approached by the Nursing Federation, which wrote to me at about

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