Ms ROSOL (Bass) – Thank you, Deputy Speaker.
‘Get a grip.’ Those are the words the minister for Health used last week when nurses raised concerns about staff at the Royal Hobart Hospital being asked to cover shifts in the emergency department at Launceston General Hospital. ‘Get a grip.’
Perhaps this is not a surprising comment coming from a minister who, earlier this year, when asked about the 136 Tasmanians who died after being ramped for an extended period, suggested that because they were old, their deaths were somehow more acceptable and expected, rather than a tragic loss of life of people who deserved our best possible response to their health emergency:
‘Get a grip.’ What a demeaning, belittling and dismissive comment from the minister for Health. This statement is gaslighting. It is a way of saying, ‘nothing to see here, there is no problem, you are overreacting’, similar to suggesting that asking questions is negativity and talking the health system down. It is a way of denying the reality that is staring us in the face. There are so many examples of things going wrong in Health at the moment. LGH cannot staff its emergency department and nurses are being requested to shift around the state in response. A new right-to-information (RTI) published by the Department of Health shows some appalling information. Wait times for patients: outpatient appointments in excess of 10 years; wait time for urgent outpatient appointments, which are supposed to be within 30 days, in excess of five‑and-a-half years; unbelievable ambulance wait times topping 23 hours. It is appalling but not really a surprise, given that the wait time for the 90th percentile of emergency calls for an ambulance in Hobart has gone from 21 minutes to 31 minutes in the past five years; and the average statewide emergency response time has nearly doubled under the Liberals. It has gone from 8.8 minutes in 2013-14 to 15.1 minutes in 2022-23.
Associate nurse unit managers in emergency departments at Royal Hobart Hospital and other Tasmanian hospitals have recently been trained in patient pat-downs and searches for weapons. The ANMF has expressed deep concern about these requirements being placed on nurses. Nursing is all about health care, not security. Searching patients for weapons falls outside the nursing and midwifery board’s scope of nursing practice and capabilities, and is not part of an associate nurse unit manager’s listed duties or responsibilities. Weapons searches also place associate nurse unit managers at significant risk and could escalate already dangerous situations in emergency departments. If nurses are not feeling safe at work, how is training them to search and pat down patients a response that helps them feel safer? This takes them away from patient care and potentially makes them less safe.
Instead of asking nurses to search for weapons, the minister for Health should be funding better security in our emergency departments. Perhaps the Health minister should take his own advice and ‘get a grip’ on the reality of what is happening on the ground in the Health department instead of pretending everything is okay. The health service is not okay and it needs serious investment. The Health minister must get a grip, cancel the budget cuts and provide the funding the Tasmanian Health Service needs. All Tasmanians deserve health care that meets their needs and helps them live their best lives.
