Page 3327 - Week 11 - Wednesday, 14 November 2007
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But it would seem that this sad incident is only the tip of the iceberg. A couple of months ago, a man who had a heart attack at Bowral while on holiday from his home in Canberra was sent back to the Canberra Hospital by ambulance to convalesce. After being taken out of the ambulance on a stretcher, he was forced to sit in a waiting room for several hours before a bed could be found for him.
When a family member complained about the situation, a member of the hospital staff replied that the whole point of having a glass wall between the nurses station and the waiting room was that staff could monitor the condition of waiting patients by looking at their colour. The same relative was told by nursing staff that her father was very lucky to have had his heart attack in Bowral, because it was unlikely that he would have survived had he had it in Canberra. That is very concerning indeed.
Yesterday I mentioned an email from a member of the public who was recently admitted to the Canberra Hospital with two fractures, one of the compound variety, and a dislocation. I referred to his 10½-hour wait in an emergency bed with an exposed wound. I also referred to the fact that he remarked on the condition of the bathroom he had to use at the hospital. He thought it was a disgrace. He talked about the bottom of the mirror. He said that at the bottom of the mirror there was a tray in which lay dirty old toothbrushes, dirty old razors and a number of other things. He was quite impressed by the efforts of the staff, because he felt that they were run off their feet. Yesterday, I referred to some statements he made. He concluded by saying: “Little wonder I have experienced a repeated infection in one of the wounds, or was that caused by lying in accident and emergency for hours on end with an open wound.”
The opposition has had reports of things like vomit being in the same place in a corridor days later and about ward toilets. We have heard, from nurses and patients’ relatives, about equipment not being available—such as lifting equipment—causing one patient to hurt himself. And there are many reports of the lack of basic supplies.
What has the government’s response been? The health minister told us yesterday that this was not true. According to Ms Gallagher, speaking yesterday in question time, there are always plenty of supplies even if a supply tray is sometimes temporarily depleted. Everything being reported by patients and their relatives—and nursing staff, before they were sat on by management so they could not speak—is apparently a figment of people’s imagination. Ditto with the maxillofacial and reconstruction patients who have had to have allegedly failed operations or misdiagnoses fixed in the private sector in the ACT. According to the minister, these reports are just an attempt to smear medical professionals who, she appeared to threaten yesterday, would not stand for much more of this.
This is not the first time that the opposition has been threatened by this government on the issue of the standards of medical care in our public hospital system in the ACT. Ms Gallagher says blithely that she is “confident” or “very satisfied” with the process in the public hospital system, and specifically in the Canberra Hospital. She said yesterday that she would not speak further about the maxillofacial and reconstructive surgery area. She was most indignant that a public hospital system which has patients
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