Page 2496 - Week 07 - Wednesday, 1 August 2018
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . . Video
government will not be supporting this motion and why I will be moving amendments that reflect, we believe, a more appropriate way of dealing with this very serious issue.
Every year across the ACT health system there are around 119,000 admissions to our public hospitals and 148,000 presentations to Canberra’s emergency departments. Our public hospitals will deliver more than 10,700 emergency surgeries and 14,000 elective surgeries. Our walk-in centres will see around 40,000 presentations, not to mention the thousands of Canberrans who will receive outpatient services and are provided with care through our six community health centres. In addition, mental health services are delivered to more than 10,000 clients through our acute and community-based programs. This is just a snapshot of the volume of services provided to our community by our health workforce: more than 7,000 dedicated and hardworking doctors, nurses, midwives, allied health professionals and support staff who come to work every day and are focused on ensuring that people have access to quality health care.
This is reflected by the feedback we receive from patients and the community. From January 2018 to April 2018, Canberra Hospital and health services received 1,090 pieces of feedback. The majority of this feedback has been positive about the services provided. When patients were asked if they would recommend Canberra Hospital to family and friends, 90 per cent said yes. When asked how they rated the care they received in the hospital, 88 per cent said it was either very good or good. These results reflect some of the strengths of ACT Health as an organisation that are not reflected in Mrs Dunne’s motion.
As I said earlier, everyone has a right to feel respected, supported and safe at work. As a front-line service, this is something that ACT Health takes seriously. To ensure that our workforce is supported, ACT Health actively works not only to manage and prevent inappropriate behaviours in the workplace but also to foster a respectful, supportive and inclusive workplace culture.
Importantly, I want to emphasise that the Health Directorate has zero tolerance for inappropriate behaviour and takes all allegations of bullying very seriously. This approach is across all our hospitals and other health facilities, including Calvary. As the Minister for Health and Wellbeing has said in this place before, a positive working environment is everyone’s responsibility, and all ACT Health staff are expected to uphold the highest standards of behaviour and contribute to a healthy, productive workforce.
There are a number of well-established processes in place to ensure that staff are supported and feel that they can come forward and report inappropriate behaviour if it does occur. As my proposed amendment states, these include training programs to educate staff on respectful workplace behaviours and educate managers on how to manage complaints of inappropriate behaviour; avenues for staff to raise instances of bullying and harassment and rigorous processes for investigating bullying appropriately and independently; and support programs for staff that have made allegations of workplace bullying through the employee assistance program.
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . . Video