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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2004 Week 02 Hansard (Tuesday, 2 March 2004) . . Page.. 499 ..

emergency department patients. And to keep some sort of functionality we had to utilize our 3 resuscitation beds, normally reserved for major trauma, cardiac arrests and the like.

This adversely affects our preparedness to manage patients with critical life threatening conditions. With our ability to treat patients reduced to a trickle the waiting room quickly fills with the sick and injured. 25 to 30 patients, all waiting up to 6 hrs to be seen is not unusual. And many of these people will become unfortunate participants in the next days access block.

We are also beginning to see the emergence of a new farcical situation, where at times there may be a full waiting room, whilst inside doctors sit around frustrated, waiting for an empty bed to become available to treat them. In order to best utilize this wasted time doctors will now come out to the Triage desk looking for low acuity patients (sprains, cuts, the flu etc) that can be treated on chairs or in the corridors. This results in a sort of reverse triage scenario, where the lesser ill are treated before the needier. The department devolves into dysfunction, completely unable to meet the needs of the community that it serves.

That is a very telling statement from a nurse. It was only last week that I heard that there was a bank-up of ambulances—about six or seven ambulances—outside Canberra hospital and people were being treated in those ambulances because there was no space inside for them to be treated. For the last year or so, I have heard continual complaints from nurses—very experienced nurses; nurses who in some instances I have known for some time, who have kept me apprised of problems in our health system, regardless of who was in government—who are becoming increasingly more frustrated. I have heard of nurses who have been there for 30 years and who have done a shift and then had to be called back in when they were very tired and would rather not do that because it affects their efficiency. Being the dedicated professionals that they are, they worried about not operating at optimum efficiency with regard to patients. I have been told that it is quite a common occurrence now that experienced nurses are doing more than just their allocated shift. There is a huge problem there in terms of shortages. One nurse I spoke to, who has been in the system for over 30 years and who from time to time has called me and complained about problems in the system, said, about a month ago, “In my 35-odd years of nursing in Canberra, I have never seen it so bad.” Why is this so?

We have seen the figures that have come out recently showing that we spend more money and get less service than anywhere else in the country. We are a small system and maybe we do not have the economies of scale that larger systems do. But for us to spend more than the Northern Territory per head of population and not get the service that is needed is really something that this territory cannot be proud of and this government cannot be proud of.

Probably every year since I have been in this place, I have seen increases in the health budget. In recent times, under this minister, there have been significant increases in the health budget. Yes, that is the nature of health; but where on earth is the money going to? Why do we have this crisis? What is going wrong? What is the government doing? I accept that there are some things that probably are somewhat beyond its control; but when you get experienced nurses saying, “I have never seen it this bad,” quite clearly there are things the government can do that it is not doing.

There are little things that could be done. I read out a scenario in the casualty ward. It is interesting to look at some of the figures there. There is mention of about 25 to 30

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