Page 388 - Week 02 - Tuesday, 7 March 2006
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the hospital system is a reflection on the government and the minister. The staff can only work with the tools that this government provides and they are not being given the tools to do the job properly.
Mr Corbell should listen to experts such as Dr Peter Collingnon, who has said that we need 100 extra acute beds. Despite the numbers that the minister throws around, those beds have not been provided. The problem is that access block permeates from the emergency department to the rest of the hospital. I want to refer to one of the 600 staff that Minister Corbell consulted with and suggested that I talk to. This staff member has put his opinion of the plan on the internet. It is to be found at impactednurse.com. It is headed “The plan. Excuse me while I pinch myself” and it reads:
I spend so much time venting my spleen over problems occurring in public hospitals emergency departments that my keyboard is covered in crusty green goop. I thought that was about to change.
For the first time in quite a long long time, we had something positive to work towards.
We had a plan.
It was not a perfect plan, mind you, and I foresaw rocky road ahead whilst we ironed out its wrinkles. And it would not likely ingratiate the ED with the ward nurses. But if it worked, it just might succeed in addressing the dangerous workload generated by access block and redistributing it equitably throughout the hospital.
It aimed to achieve an emergency department occupancy rate of 85 per cent, taking the lid off of overcrowding in the ED by re-empowering it to effectively manage its core business.
It was quite a radical plan and I certainly don’t think it has been attempted anywhere else in Australia. And even more heartening was the fact that the hospital executive appeared to be actively driving its implementation.
When I initially wrote this piece I was pretty excited by its potential, expectantly typing …. “I won’t go into the nuts and bolts of it all right now … lest I put the kibosh on it. But we will be implementing it real soon. Watch this space.”
Kiboshed.
I should have known.
In the final draft of this plan, each subsequent draft was watered down until it reached a veritable homeopathic dilution. Pretty much ineffectual.
The original plan was a bold 4 phase escalation in response to overcrowding of the ED. In order to maintain occupancy rate of 85 per cent, in intensive effort would be activated hospital wide rather that trying to contain the problem in the ED as is current practice.
A 4 bed transition ward would be open to manage ED patients waiting for admission to the hospital.
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