Page 933 - Week 03 - Thursday, 21 March 2019
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . . Video
In terms of complaint handling, 38 per cent of respondents had submitted a formal complaint and only seven per cent were satisfied with the outcome of that process. You might ask why only 38 per cent of respondents put in a formal complaint, and the answer lies in what staff told the review panel. One nurse reported to the review panel that they were too scared to put in Riskman reports because her friend had been reprimanded. Another said:
While working in another facility where lots of medication errors occurred I placed many incident reports to enable improvement of issues which were rarely acted upon and when I left the manager made a comment to me about the number of incidents I put in, as if to say I was a pain and created work for her.
Perhaps the most telling is the quote which I referred to earlier:
Many feel that making a formal complaint would only make matters worse, for fear of later being the target of poorer treatment.
These are the many problems the ACT health system has in relation to culture. We must remember that when we talk about culture one of the things that was found in the Reid review was that most hospitals have problems with culture, but the problems of culture in the ACT are significantly and statistically worse than in other organisations.
Yes, we understand that there is a problem across the board and this minister has relied on that—“There’s always bullying in hospitals.” A bit like Minister Berry this morning, they cannot conceive of an organisation where there is no bullying or where bullying is minimised and they just use it as an excuse. “It goes on everywhere so we just have to put up with it.” Mr Reid and his reviewers said, “Yes, it does go on anywhere, but it is palpably worse in the ACT under this minister.” One of the things we have seen is that this minister was content to brush under the carpet as much as possible the poor culture of this place.
But not only do the hospital staff have to struggle with the worst culture of any health system in the country, they are doing it in substandard buildings. Some elements of the Canberra hospital are, as we know, more than 45 years old and have been allowed to operate without refurbishment. In April 2017, nearly two years ago, we saw as a consequence of that a fire in the main electrical switchboard in building 2. The work to remediate that and other critical electrical issues has still not been completed. It has not been completed two years down the track. I know that it is a complicated job, but this minister and this government sat on their hands until a fire broke out before they did anything.
We have learned through the AECOM report, which this government and this minister tried to suppress by claiming executive privilege, that there were four extreme risks and 143 high risk issues affecting the Canberra Hospital. AECOM identified 2016 as the year for dealing with the extreme risks—the year in which they should be fixed—and the rest of them should have been fixed by 2017-18. Not all of those risks have been addressed.
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . . Video