MINISTER FOR HEALTH — HEALTH SECTOR
104. Ms L. METTAM to the Minister for Health:
I refer to the escalating health
crisis and deteriorating relationship between the minister and doctors, nurses,
the Australian Medical Association and the Australian Nursing Federation, which
culminated in today's rally.
(1) Does the
minister concede that he has lost the confidence of health professionals
working in our state's public health system?
(2) What material
changes will the minister make to fix systemic issues within the state's
healthcare sector?
Mr R.H.
COOK replied:
(1)–(2) No,
I do not, I think is the short and long answer to that question. As the member
was at the rally today, she would be familiar with some of the things that we
said we would do as part of our overall recognition of the pressures that are impacting on our health system at the moment.
As I have mentioned before, our system is under pressure, just like
every other hospital system in Australia. Either as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic
or subsequent to it, there has been a significant increase in the number of
people presenting to our hospitals, the acuity with which they present, mental
health patients and the number of long-stay patients. All our hospital systems
everywhere are being challenged by these things, so we are no orphans in that
process.
As I mentioned before, we are doing a
significant amount of work to increase the capacity of our hospital system in
the context of that. Over 500 beds will be created—300 inpatient and
100 mental health beds, and, in addition to that, 117 beds will be brought on
as a matter of priority. Eighty-one of those beds have already been introduced
with another 34 to be introduced by August. Indeed, we also will be
significantly increasing the capacity of our emergency departments with 95 new
beds or chairs as part of our overall hospital expansion system. Of course,
hospitals are not just beds and buildings; they are about staff and they are about the resources and the people who
provide the care next to those beds. Over the next two years, we will
recruit an extra 600 nurses. We will have 1 000 new nurse graduates this year
and 1 000 next year to make sure that we significantly increase our workforce
capacity, a workforce that has been challenged by the fact that we do not have
the usual access to doctors and nurses travelling from overseas.
The
situation with regard to the emergency department at Perth Children's
Hospital and the loss of life with regard to Aishwarya is obviously
incredibly tragic. It is horrible, just horrible, to contemplate what that
family must be going through. I also want to acknowledge the staff involved and
say, once again, that all the emergency department staff have my absolute
respect and support.
Today
I was able to talk about the implementation of a 10-point plan that the
Australian Nursing Federation put to us, which, in part, incorporated
some of the things that we were considering as part of the expansion at PCH.
That includes an extra 16 nurses in the emergency department, which means that
we will have a nurse working constantly in the triage and waiting area, have
more support for the triage nursing staff and boost the number of people
available for a separate resuscitation team, which is an important part of making
sure that we have capacity in the times when things get busy. I was also very
pleased to say that we could announce today that an extra 20 beds have been
brought onstream at PCH—10 inpatient beds and 10 repurposed
high-dependency unit beds.
I think what people at that rally
were looking for today was leadership. I think they were looking for ways
forward for the hospital and to make sure that we take the opportunity to learn
from these experiences. I also dealt in
large part with the cultural issues that are associated with such a tragic
situation. We want to rebuild the trust with the nursing and medical
workforce and that is why I announced today a ministerial advisory panel made up of the leadership of each
of the unions to make sure that we can continue to improve the
relationship between the executive teams and the frontline teams.