Ambulances now waiting 3000 hours - McGinty shifts the problem.
Ambulances waited outside the Emergency Departments (ED’s) of major Perth hospitals for nearly 3000 hours this year according to a story in yesterday’s “The West Australian”.
What this story doesn’t tell, is that 2500 of these hours were in the last five months. That suggests to the Desert Rat that St John’s Ambulance will spent at least 5000 hours queued outside hospitals this year if ED problems are not fixed.
On three occasions since September, there has been more than 10 ambulances queued outside an Emergency Department (Stage 3 Ramping). Last year ambulances were ramped for 234 hours!
To solve the problem of overcrowding of ED’s, McGinty decided to keep the patients in the ambulance outside hospitals where they are attended to by paramedics. At one of these understaffed and overcrowded ED’s, nurses were often attending to patients on the footpath outside the ED.
Ambulance ramping shows how incompetently Health Minister Jim McGinty is running our health system. Ambulance ramping is McGinty’s solution to the overcrowding of ED’s at major hospitals.
ED’s are understaffed. They have about 20% less registered nurse than their full complement and they can’t hold staff. That’s about 40 nurses short in a major hospital ED and that places enormous pressure on the remaining staff, who become exhausted and burned out. The ED’s are short of doctors as well.
Because of the delays in treatment many nurses and doctors are abused daily in Ed’s. Waiting patients are often in pain, have no food, no water and no toilet facilities.
Because of the stress of overwork and abuse, one major ED lost over 20% of their staff in one month!
“Nursing sucks! The pay's shit. You continually get abused. There’s no thanks or appreciation.” That’s a comment the Desert Rat heard from a frustrated, recently resigned ED nurse who is now driving a truck in the Pilbara. This is a person who once enjoyed nursing, can handle stress and trauma, who now has no interest in returning to the profession.
McGinty, from the Socialist Left is ideologically opposed to the private health system, but his incompetence is driving many people into the private health system. Is this deliberate, designed to take the pressure off the public health system which is now in disarray? And that is despite massive revenue windfall generated by the mining boom!
You are right to nail McGinty's fudging of the ED numbers through ambulance-ramping. It is the latest episode in a long-running story of deceit.
ReplyDeleteMany will recall how the Socialist Left supremo responded to the problem of waiting lists by simply taking people off the list if they were still waiting for surgery after a designated period of time.
McGinty has done a very good job of enriching his mate Neale Fong and a coterie of shiny-arsed consultants.
Sadly, none of this largesse has trickled down to the sick and the poor.