Page 951 - Week 03 - Wednesday, 17 March 2010

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to access services and could not. While I understand that two of the resignations were previously known of by ACT Health and that recruitment was well underway to replace them, I have heard different accounts about why the other four radiotherapists tendered their resignation.

From what I have been told, those four radiotherapists were juniors undergoing training and, given other states pay higher salaries to qualified radiotherapists, it is often the case that once a junior radiotherapist finishes their training here they leave Canberra quite quickly in search of a higher salary. So when those four juniors finished their training, they tendered their resignation giving two weeks notice and left for interstate. This should not have been news to ACT Health. This change could have been expected and planned for. If the stories relayed to me have been true, I am quite surprised that the replacement of those juniors had not been planned for or that ACT Health had not sought to provide further incentives to retain those staff.

In approaching this motion, my office has consulted with local consumer representative organisations which have an interest in cancer services. These include Bosom Buddies, the prostate cancer support group, Cancer Voices and the Health Care Consumers Association of the ACT. We have asked them: what would you like to see achieved from this debate before the Assembly today? Their focus was, of course, on constructive outcomes. We have come up with five points that the consumer organisations thought should be pursued. I note, in presenting these points, that each of the organisations had a slightly different perspective on the situation. A common theme was, however—and this is coming from the consumer groups—that none of them sought to blame the minister, but rather they wanted to focus on opening the lines of communication with managerial and front-line staff as they thought that was a key issue in this whole instance.

The first recommendation they provided to us was to investigate if staff at the Canberra Hospital who assist in the front-line provision of cancer services require customer service or reflective practice training. The consumers well recognise that staff working in cancer services face a difficult job, but at the same time the patients do not feel as if they are always respected as people. It is about treating the person and not just the disease.

The second suggestion was to reinstitute the formal consultation meetings that used to occur between managerial and consumer representatives until about a year ago. Those meetings used to occur every month or so, and if they had been used during the staff shortages earlier this year it could have gone a long way to assisting in managing consumer expectations. People are often respectful if you explain to them what is going on, but when they face a brick wall they get very frustrated, so it is important to keep those lines of communication open.

Thirdly, the Canberra Hospital should plan for staff turnover and aim to ensure a staff person will be replaced before they leave a position. Why, for example, had recruitment not been finalised prior to the two retiring staff leaving their positions? And why did HR or managerial staff not plan to better manage their junior radiotherapists and recognise that they would get better money elsewhere as soon as they finished their training? I also asked a question yesterday in question time about


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