5 November 2021
People needing emergency medical attention in and around the Murray Mallee town of Karoonda now have to travel more than 65km to Murray Bridge after the Karoonda and Districts Soldiers' Memorial Hospital temporarily closed its emergency department on Friday, October 22.
The Riverland Mallee Coorong Local Health Network (RMCHN) said the hospital's emergency department was closed because of staff shortages.
Yorke Peninsula nurses have this year been left extremely stressed at the lack of doctors and staffing shortages at Maitland Hospital and other local hospitals.
There have been numerous occasions this year in the Yorke Peninsula when hospitals and emergency departments have been left with no doctors on site or even on call.
Staff are concerned for the safety of patients given the lack of doctors and the fatigue created by nurses having to working overtime or double shifts to pick up the shortfall.
They are also angry about the lack of communication from management who have at times been absent or difficult to contact when urgent issues arise.
“We’re in a crisis situation, and the health bureaucrats by and large I’ve got absolute contempt for,” one long-time regional medical professional told The Advertiser this week.
“I can no longer tolerate working in a system that has so little respect for its frontline medical and nursing staff,’’ said another this week of his decision to quit.
Safety concerns also continue unabated. Ten Code Black incidents at Port Lincoln hospital in October alone and another on Monday when SAPOL were called and removed potential weapons from a violent patient, including scissors and a screwdriver.
In addition to the attack on a nurse and doctor highlighted in Wednesday’s media release calling for 24/7 on-site security guards at Port Lincoln Hospital, other October incidents included:
- Oct 26 - A patient was brought into the ED via SAAS with SAPOL assistance after self-harming and was intoxicated. He escalated and was verbally abusing – yelling and screaming. He was sedated, shackled (by SAPOL) and spitting at staff.
- Oct 14 - A patient became verbally aggressive, yelling, scaring and threatening staff. The result was another Code Black.
- Oct 6 - A patient, unhappy after a mental health review – became verbally aggressive and tipped a bed on its side. SAPOL were in attendance (the patient was in police custody) but staff had to call a Code Black to get SAPOL back-up.
People living in rural and remote areas have a shorter life expectancy and higher levels of illness and disease-related factors than those in major cities. In many rural and remote locations there is limited access to health care and a reliance on public health services to service the community.
The majority of health care providers in these areas across South Australia are nurses and midwives who deliver essential care to our state’s vulnerable populations. The chronic underinvestment in the rural and remote health workforce is placing at risk the future provision of high-quality services.
As a result, the ANMF (SA Branch) has developed a pre-election Health Policy Position Statement addressing the entire state and also systemic issues relating to rural and remote area health. We are asking for:
- The development of appropriate graduate support, including increasing the number of graduate placements in rural hospitals.
- Incentive packages to encourage short-term secondments for nurses and midwives who have specialist skills in critical need.
- Robust workforce planning, targeted investment in recruitment and retention; and allowing nurses and midwives to work to their full scope of practice.
- Increased funding in advanced skills and leadership training to strengthen the future nursing leadership capacity.
- Support and fund financial and other incentives to attract nurses and midwives to rural and remote practice areas.
“A strong, robust health care system is the bedrock and most crucial and fundamentally basic component of any society,’’ ANMF (SA Branch) CEO/Secretary Adj Associate Professor Elizabeth Dabars AM said.
“The incoming government has an absolute responsibility to its citizens to ensure we have the best health care system possible, and not just for patients. We also need a system that values its medical staff, not one that subjects them to the stress, fatigue and violence we currently see on a daily basis’’.
The major political parties’ responses to the issues, and the ideas we advance for policy, will be published to our members in the lead-up to the state election. We will also publish these responses on our website for the benefit of the wider community.
To hammer home our message to State MPs please join the ANMF’s Action for Health campaign here .