Page 1517 - Week 06 - Wednesday, 6 June 2007
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a report released this week stated that the emergency department where i work has the longest emergency waiting times in the country.
i can hear the excuses now, “that was before the access improvement program”, “those figures are two years old” “we have opened MAPU and aged care beds” “we have allocated a total of 7 million dollars to improve access” blah blah blah
Sorry, minister, but it does sound like your speech. She goes on:
lets get a few things straight…
the access improvement program is bollocks, in our emergency department it has involved changes that have cost a lot but have had no real benefit to access. for example over 50,000 bucks, (kindly donated by you and me the taxpayer) was spent on the redesign of triage, including changing the desk and the laying of a really expensive bright red glittery floor, nice and calming!! the design of the desk = less room and neck ache, and the red floor hasn’t really seemed to help getting people from the waiting room to emergency beds…whoops!!
also as a part of the access improvement plan, god knows how much money is being spent on new uniforms for emergency department nurses, scrubs in red (nice, we seem to be on a theme here)call me stupid but i can’t work out how this will help access block, i think it is going to confuse patients, especially as the cleaners and the clerical staff also wear red.…whoops
team nursing was introduced despite the nursing staff not wanting it and there being no evidence to its value in an emergency environment. but we get funding for it, and someone was planning to present it as a great success at an emergency nursing conference...whoops.
not sure how much money has been wasted here, but what it means in terms of staff can be quantified. there are fewer nurses doing hands on patient care, there are more nurses in patient free jobs. fewer nurses actually looking after patients equals extended time for patients in ED beds, simple really, the nurses can only look after and move patients as quickly as one person is able. and i mean one person because you guessed it, team nursing has gone out the window too. we have all been recently told that we need to be individually accountable for patients in our care, why does that ring a bell? Oh yes i remember, its because that is what nurses were saying all along!!
there are plenty more examples, loads of them, escalation plans, 321 plans, new jobs (higher grade) for bed allocations.
it’s all …
f-ed—
up.
the introduction of the first phase of the access improvement program has made no difference (this is a fact, waiting times are worse now than the recent report)
according to executive access improvement programs work in other states and in other countries, it is not working in our hospital, and i think that the people responsible for it’s failure should be held accountable.
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