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Parliamentary Questions


Question Without Notice No. 711 asked in the Legislative Assembly on 9 November 2021 by Ms L. Mettam

Parliament: 41 Session: 1

PERTH CHILDREN'S HOSPITAL — AISHWARYA ASWATH — INDEPENDENT INQUIRY REPORT

711. Ms L. METTAM to the Minister for Health:

I refer to the report of the independent inquiry into Perth Children's Hospital. The report found that workforce challenges secondary to COVID-19, clinician shortages, utilisation of existing redundancy in workforce and abnormal activity patterns had affected PCH and the emergency department.

Can the minister confirm that he was completely wrong when he made the statement following the tragic death of Aishwarya Aswath, and I am quoting here, that we have a health system performing ''magnificently''?

Mr R.H. COOK replied:

I thank the member for the question. I start by once again acknowledging the extraordinary loss experienced by Aishwarya's family. To lose anyone in our hospital system is dreadful, but it is a tragedy when we lose someone so young to such a vicious and nasty disease as sepsis. That is why we undertook the root cause analysis inquiry and then the subsequent independent inquiry to make sure that, as a system, we learn from these experiences and that we can continue to improve and have quality and safety uppermost in our minds when it comes to delivering health care.

The inquiry report that I have just tabled in Parliament today points to a range of factors that contributed to the stresses on the hospital and surrounded the issues with regard to the treatment that was received by Aishwarya, including the impact of the COVID-19 global pandemic on borders and therefore the availability of staff, which meant that it was difficult to provide the sort of backup workforce that would otherwise contribute to the ED environment. In addition to that, we also saw a significant increase in adolescent mental health presentations, as well as an increase in the number of children presenting with respiratory syncytial virus, a flu-like illness, which meant that in the later months of 2020, Perth Children's Hospital's emergency department was the busiest paediatric ED in the country.

Obviously, a range of issues contributed to those pressures. In addition to that, PCH was still bedding down the staffing configuration it needed for the ED. Members will recall that we commissioned this hospital around mid-2018 and during that time it was exploring how best to staff a very different ED layout. Unfortunately, the onset of COVID-19 meant that we did not have any long-term trends to rely upon in understanding the optimal staffing configuration for that design. Throughout 2020 we undertook a redesign of the ED as part of the review process to ensure that we had a better configuration of services there.

When I made my comments about performing magnificently, I was talking about the doctors, nurses and allied health staff who are doing an extraordinary job on behalf of the people of Western Australia. That is what I meant when I said it was performing magnificently. They are making almost heroic efforts at times, under very difficult circumstances—circumstances that are complex and not necessarily of our doing, but ones that we have to live with as a result of COVID-19, the constraints on our workforce and the peaks in demand that have been experienced.

We will continue to work with our clinical teams to make sure our staff have the support they need. That includes a significant injection of $1.9 billion as part of our 2021–22 budget allocation, which also included our ED support staff package. That has meant that we have significantly increased the number of staff working in that area. When I talk about how well our hospitals are working, I am not talking about how well the buildings are working; I am talking about how well our staff are working. They are working hard and they are tired, but they are hopefully coming towards the end of a global pandemic. We should all be very grateful for their service.