14 July 2021
Maitland Hospital's emergency department was left without a doctor again for three days last week, reports the Yorke Peninsula Country Times.
It says this comes as a Copper Coast GP has offered to cover three shifts at the Wallaroo Hospital in the past week, and Yorketown Medical Practice waits for a locum doctor to arrive to help staff the clinic and hospital.
These are just the latest examples of the problems with the health system on Yorke Peninsula, the newspaper writes, which are frustrating staff and patients. People presenting to Maitland Hospital were treated by a nurse practitioner on Wednesday, July 7, and paramedics on Thursday and Friday, July 8-9.
ANMF (SA Branch) CEO/Secretary Adj Associate Professor Elizabeth Dabars AM told the Yorke Peninsula Country Times that regional and metro hospitals are operating ridiculously over-capacity and under-staffed.
"Yorke Peninsula nurses are very concerned about suddenly being thrust with responsibilities potentially out of their scope of practice in life-and-death situations," she was quoted.
"We had an incident at Maitland of a walk-in patient with chest pain at 3am and no doctor on site. Luckily, they were not a cardiac patient needing IV medication, otherwise the outcome could have been a fatality due to doctor shortage.
"The chronic under-resourcing has resulted in nurses feeling pressured to take on extra shifts and double shifts, leading to fatigue and ultimately the potential of delayed and missed patient care."
Ms Dabars said SA Health and local health networks must ensure regional emergency departments are adequately staffed and resourced. "The idea of a hospital remaining open to provide care, including for emergency to provide care, including for emergency presentations, whilst having no medical coverage shows a staggering and dangerous level of dereliction of duty," she said.
"We are very concerned about the ongoing staff shortages with Wallaroo Hospital that have led to nurses continually being asked to work double shifts and overtime, with reduced staff on roster,’’ Ms Dabars added.
"We will be initiating a review of the roster in the next couple of weeks so these issues can be better understood and addressed.