Page 3334 - Week 08 - Tuesday, 17 August 2010
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So what did I do? On receipt of these letters, I contacted the Chief Executive of ACT Health. I asked that they go and speak to people within the maternity unit around whether there were any concerns, any issues. (Extension of time granted.)
I received assurances back through the Chief Executive of ACT Health that there were no issues within the maternity unit at the Canberra Hospital. I recall making another phone call specifically around this issue asking him to go and retest that advice. That advice came back to me saying that there were no issues, that the ongoing turbulence between a number of obstetricians within the community continued and that, outside of that, relations within the unit were good.
I then met the director of the unit and put questions to that doctor about any concerns that had been raised with that individual and any of her staff around concerns within the unit. I was given an assurance that there were not any.
The ABC was filming a story about a woman who complained around the quality of care that she received at the Canberra Hospital. I went back and retested that advice. But the advice there was around a concern relating to quality of care, and those issues presumably will be covered off through any legal action that might ensue. But that was not related to bullying and harassment. I did not get one complaint of bullying or harassment coming to me. The department itself did not get a complaint of bullying and harassment around that unit.
In a sense, if I reflect back, the doctors themselves that raised the concerns with me did not raise concerns around bullying and harassment. They did not. For Mr Hanson and Mr Seselja to say that I criticised people who made complaints around bullying and harassment is simply incorrect and cannot be left to stand on the public record. It is not correct. The obstetricians wrote to me saying that they had concerns around the workplace environment. That is the same word. They used the same word in each letter and I think there were four of them that wrote to me. They used the same word. When I wrote back to them, I asked them what they meant by that language, and they did not reply.
It is incorrect to say that I criticised people who made concerns around bullying and harassment. It is simply incorrect and not true. No matter which way Mr Hanson puts his slippery slant on it, you cannot do it. I had not received one complaint.
The morning after the TV interview on ABC, I asked that Health go down to the unit and convene a staff meeting around people’s perception of what occurred the night before, because things like that always impact heavily. We might be slightly immune from it in here—it is all fun and games and everyone can sling mud—but for the clinicians who work in that unit, I was concerned about them.
Health went in there. The interim chief executive went in there to talk with staff around the case that went to air the night before. It was during that meeting that staff began to raise concerns around some of the management within their unit. It was on that day that the advice to me changed and said that there are issues in this workplace that we need to manage and need to investigate further. Health put a management plan to me around that. From that time, I guess the rest is history.
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