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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2000 Week 7 Hansard (28 June) . . Page.. 2142 ..
MR MOORE
(continuing):situation. Indeed, I spoke to him around midnight on the Thursday night that it occurred; so it must have been about 9 June. He said that the administration had asked him to move his mother on administrative grounds because that was the most convenient thing to do.
When I spoke to the deputy director, clinical, of the hospital, Dr Kerrie Delaney, I said, "Whatever your decision is, it should be made on clinical grounds." In fact, as it turned out, it was not necessary to move Mrs Bennett in this case. I use her name only because he made her name available in the paper.
What I will say, though, is that something very interesting happened when I was at the hospital a day or two after that. A specialist came to me and said, "I am very surprised that one of my decisions, which was a very difficult decision, to move somebody from the intensive care unit was not carried through." I said, "What do you mean?" He was referring to the particular patient whom this specialist said he believed would have had better care in Sydney-not on administrative grounds but on clinical grounds.
These things are always very awkward in the sense that often on the surface they appear to be one thing, but underneath there is a series of other things in operation. I used this particular example because it had already been raised publicly. Normally I am not in a position to be able to talk about a particular patient.
In summary, there is pressure on the intensive care unit. We have taken a series of actions and will continue to take a series of actions to recruit appropriate nurses for that area. In the meantime, we have other backup systems to ensure that we get the best possible patient care and we deliver the best possible patient care.
MR CORBELL
: I have a supplementary question, Mr Speaker. I accept that the minister may need to take the supplementary question on notice. Can the minister tell the Assembly how many double shifts have been worked by nurses at the Canberra Hospital each week for the last four weeks? How many of these double shifts have been worked in the intensive care unit?MR MOORE
: I will take the part of the question as to the exact numbers on notice, but I can say that no double shift has been worked on an involuntary basis. Nurses are asked to work a double shift, but not forced. That having been said, I understand that some nurses, because they are concerned first and foremost with patient care, feel real pressure to do so when they would prefer not to be doing so. They do feel real pressure to say that they will stay back, even though they would prefer to go home. I want to distinguish between what I am saying is forced and the fact that they believe that the extra patient care is necessary.I would also like to remind members that it happens in every hospital, and it has happened in this hospital for a long time, that there are peaks within hospital administration that have to be taken care of and do put pressure on for a short time. We saw that pressure around 9 June. We saw it come up, we saw a great deal of media on it and we know that the pressure has now eased very considerably.
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