Page 2843 - Week 09 - Wednesday, 17 September 2014
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(f) the Adult Mental Health Unit was issued with a Provisional Improvement Notice in July which has been extended until October, and calls for beds to be closed or for staff numbers to be increased;
(g) although staffing levels have been increased by one extra nurse per shift as an interim measure, the Provisional Improvement Notice calls for a permanent response;
(h) the post-occupancy review on the Adult Mental Health Unit is six to nine months overdue according to the Government’s own timeline;
(i) there was a fire lit by one of the patients inside the unit on Monday, 8 September 2014, which resulted in the evacuation of 60 people; and
(j) the Government has failed to provide a safe workplace for staff; and
(2) calls on the Government to:
(a) review security and nurse safety of the Adult Mental Health Unit at TCH and for the review to be tabled in the Assembly no later than November 2014;
(b) update the Assembly on the program for, and implementation of, improvements in both March 2015 and August 2015;
(c) introduce permanent measures that will significantly reduce or prevent incidents of violence and abuse directed at staff; and
(d) adopt a model of care that serves employee safety as well as patient care, and that neither one be weighted as superior to the other.
I am very glad to stand here today to call for a review of safety at the adult mental health unit. Workplace health and safety laws state that the workplace should be, as far as possible, without risk. With 57 assaults in a year and rising, and 18 out of perhaps approximately 85 staff off work due to injury, staff at this unit have a right to go to work with a fair expectation that they are not going to be assaulted or intimidated. Families have a right to know that their loved ones are safe at work.
The attitude that this is a dangerous work environment would not be acceptable on a building site, in a pub, at a school, and should not be acceptable for nurses in the adult mental health unit. If this is the norm, then it is a sure recipe for post-traumatic stress disorder and other long-term injuries to what is already a scarce and precious resource in mental health nursing staff.
According to our ACT Work Health and Safety Act 2011:
The person with … control of a workplace must ensure, so far as is reasonably practicable, that the workplace, the means of entering and exiting the workplace and anything arising from the workplace are without risks to the health and safety of any person.
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