Page 2494 - Week 07 - Wednesday, 1 August 2018
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and intimidation. That is completely wrong. There are no safe and respectful pathways in ACT Health, and bullying and intimidation are rife. If you report inappropriate activity to a senior manager in ACT Health and you are not one of the preferred few, something is likely to happen to you. You yourself will often be accused of bullying. You will be accused of being something else.
It was pointed out to me recently that a clinician drew to the supervisor’s attention a colleague for whom English was not her first language. She drew to the supervisor’s attention that maybe this person needed some assistance in this place. She was concerned that she had made mistakes which may have stemmed from the fact that English was not her first language. Instead of the issue being addressed, the person who raised the issue—a complaint was not made; she believed that this person was quite good at the job—was accused of racism, and was put down publicly for being racist. You are not likely to raise an issue again if that is what happens.
I am calling for the executive to establish a board of inquiry under the Inquiries Act because this has gone on too long, and there have been no proper answers. This inquiry needs to be taken out into the open. It needs to look at management practices in ACT Health that deliver outcomes where people fall into these situations. It needs to be both top down and bottom up. It needs to be a safe place and a respectful place for people to tell their stories without fear of intimidation.
This board of inquiry needs to hear from the likes of Charlie and from the dozens of other people who ring my office on a regular basis. Yesterday someone in the media asked me why I was doing this, apart from the fact that I care about the staff at the Canberra Hospital and the Calvary Public Hospital and elsewhere who are complaining to me, and the former staff, who are much more open about their complaints. I am also concerned for my staff. My staff are becoming the frontline for dealing with people damaged by their experiences in ACT Health.
I owe it to my staff to find a way of directing those people to somewhere where they will get an answer. With all the best will in the world, my three part-time staff and I do not have the answers and the solutions to their problems. It seems to me that the ministers are not interested.
Every day we see the impact that bullying, either directly or indirectly, has on patients in our healthcare system. We see it in the stories—“For goodness sake, this is not a private hospital, I should not have to change your sheets”, about which I think, on reflection (Extension of time granted.), the person who made those comments to a patient at the women’s and children’s hospital would be mortified that she said it. But we have heard already from the head of the women’s and children’s hospital that we have social working psychologists and psychiatrists coming in to assist the staff because of the pressure in that environment. That pressure leads to bullying.
We are very lucky that Charlie’s attempt to commit suicide did not succeed. His family is very lucky. But how many more successful or unsuccessful attempts must we as a community go through before we can provide a safe and respectful health system in the ACT? I commend the motion to provide a board of inquiry into bullying
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