HOSPITALS — MATERNITY BYPASSES
664. Ms L. METTAM to the Minister for Health:
I have a supplementary question.
Given that there were 40 fewer midwives at the beginning of this financial year
than the last and an additional 400 babies are expected to be born at King
Edward Memorial Hospital for Women alone in 2021–22, what reassurance
can these expectant mothers have that they will not be bypassed from hospital
to hospital as a new standard measure of care?
Mr R.H.
COOK replied:
As
I said, they would look to the record and they would see that in a lot of
circumstances, the number of bypasses for maternity services has reduced, not increased, under the Labor
government. They would also look to the recruitment of nurses that is
going on. There are almost 1 000 new nurses in our hospital system as a result
of our recruitment campaign from January to September this year. We have seen
an extra 15 midwives as part of that cohort and an extra 42 nurse graduate
places to specialise in midwifery as part of our GradConnect program. What we
can see is a significant increase in the activity to not only recruit nurses,
but also continue to bring through those young nurses specialising in
midwifery.
We have significant
shortages and constraints in workforce in our health system at the moment. We
are experiencing that right across
the nation, because for some bizarre, historical reasons we have sought to
recruit doctors and nurses from overseas to bolster our training
programs rather than have a home-grown version of our healthcare workforce.
With the international border shut because of the commonwealth government's
decision, we have a much more constrained healthcare workforce, but, as members
can see, we are working proactively to recruit more people to our health
system. That program is working very well. Many members would have already seen
the launch of our media campaign over the weekend, so we are making great progress.
I think the government and the healthcare workers who back us up are doing a great
job.