Page 382 - Week 02 - Tuesday, 7 March 2006
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hospital, he acknowledges that there is plausible causal relationship. Professor Cameron is more forthright, however. In his article he states quite bluntly:
An overcrowded hospital should now be regarded as an unsafe hospital.
Then he follows up by stating:
Given that it is logical that there is a causal relationship and that there is no known increased risks to patients under conditions of normal hospital bed occupancy, it is unacceptable to continue to allow hospital overcrowding to occur.
Unfortunately, with this government’s head-in-the-sand attitude when it comes to health, we can expect that they will happily continue to let overcrowding occur. Since 30 January, as my colleague Mr Smyth has noted, the Canberra Hospital was on bypass some eight times, including twice in the same day. In the same period, Calvary was on bypass on one occasion as well. Altogether our public hospitals were on bypass on nine occasions, for a total of almost 14 hours. Not only that but on at least four occasions at the Canberra Hospital emergency department patients had to wait on trolleys in corridors.
Where was the minister during all this? What comments did he have to make? None. I did not hear anything. Why? Because to him this situation is normal; nothing to be concerned about, it would seem. Here is what Professor Cameron had to say about patients waiting on trolleys in corridors:
It is obvious that making elderly or disabled patients wait on uncomfortable emergency trolleys in corridors, with sleep deprivation and minimal privacy, is inhumane.
What that means is that on four occasions at least in the last month or so Canberrans have had to endure inhumane treatment. It is simply flying in the face of this government’s very own Human Rights Act on how human beings should be treated. Where are Mr Stanhope and his bill of rights when you need him? Certainly not in the Canberra Hospital’s emergency department on busy days.
As a quick aside, I would alert people to the Canberra Times article today “10 things to know” about hospitals by Frank Millburn of Pearce. At point No 8 he says, having been a patient and recently stayed in one:
When you’re relaxed and happy, your body knows it and responds. Ask any nurse about the difference in recovery times between grumpy and pleasant patients.
For a long time, the opposition has been extremely concerned about access block and overcrowding. Indeed it was in July 2004 that we got the rather startling wake-up call from the Australasian College for Emergency Medicine. To remind members, in summary, this is what the college had to say about our public hospital emergency departments:
The problem of overcrowding is indisputable in the ACT. That there are negative consequences for performance, adverse event rates, compromise of privacy and staff retentions has been documented repeatedly in other settings.
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