The Labor-led inquiry heard evidence about the pressures on emergency departments,ballooning treatment times and staff burnout. One nurse described emergency as “a war zone”.
“Every day one of those junior nurses goes on the floor and treats her patients,she’s risking her registration,” said senior nurse of 25 years and union branch president Kelly Falconer.
“Making decisions,which ultimately may end her in a coroner’s court explaining why the patient died. And it’s no fault of the nurses. It’s a system that’s failing.”
Upper house Labor MP Rose Jackson said the evidence had given a “shocking insight” into the frontline crisis in NSW hospitals.
Data from the Bureau of Health Information last month showed more than a quarter of patients arriving at NSW hospitals by ambulance spent at least 30 minutes parked outside or waiting in corridors before entering.
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The inquiry on Wednesday heard patients had a 10 per cent greater chance of dying within seven days of admission after experiencing delays in admission.
Chief executive of the Council of Ambulance Authorities David Waters said it was not uncommon to see patients on stretchers for four to six hours,and in some instances “up to 12 to 14 hours”.
A NSW Health spokeswoman said almost 84 per cent of ambulance patients were transferred to an emergency department within 30 minutes,which is the best performance among all Australian jurisdictions.
Setthy Ung,chair of South Western Sydney Local Health District,said it was common that patients who had been driven to hospital were given lower priority,simply to free up ambulances to get them back on the road.
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Earlier,Australasian College for Emergency Medicine president Dr Clare Skinner said it was now normal that hospitals were forced to treat patients in corridors.
“It’s like working with a conveyor belt full of things you can’t get to fast enough,but what’s on the conveyor belt is human distress and suffering,” she said.
While she acknowledged “tremendous” recent health infrastructure spending by the government,Dr Skinner said there had not been concurrent investment in staff.
In the June state budget,the government announced more than 10,000 workers to be recruited to hospitals and health services under a $4.5 billion investment.
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Health Minister Brad Hazzard said the state had just endured a one-in-100-year pandemic,but acknowledged individuals at the frontline,“who would feel particularly stressed,and I’m sympathetic to that”.
Health Services Union secretary Gerard Hayes said Hazzard had guided the health sector through the challenges of the pandemic,but a royal commission was needed into health spending.
“We have to get to the root cause of why one-third of the state budget isn’t sufficient to deliver quality health service,” Hayes said.
Greens MP and health spokesperson Cate Faehrmann said Wednesday’s witnesses had “resoundingly rejected” the minister’s assertion that ambulance ramping and bed block was rare in NSW.
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