Western Australia’s health minister, Kim Hames, has dismissed claims that patients at Perth’s Fiona Stanley hospital could have been exposed to serious infections by the use of unsterilised surgical equipment.
The state secretary of the Australian Nursing Federation, Mark Olson, said patients at the new $2bn hospital had been kept under anaesthetic for extended periods while nurses searched for clean instruments.
Olson said hospital management were playing “Russian roulette” with patients’ lives by not taking up the issue with the operator, Serco.
Nurses at the hospital have threatened to go on strike.
Olson said patients who had undergone surgery should be tested for serious diseases, including HIV, because there was no guarantee that equipment was safe.
“It’s a small price to pay for piece of mind,” he said on Tuesday.
Hames dismissed the ANF’s claims as “nonsense”, saying it was “scaremongering at its worst”.
“The reality is that where there have been issues with sterilisation, and in some cases instruments not properly cleaned, those instruments have not been used on patients,” he told reporters on Tuesday.
“So there has been no risk to patients, according to the advice I have received.”
The hospital’s operator, Serco, has until Friday to answer a breach of contract notice from the government, and must demonstrate that it has made improvements or face further repercussions.
The UK-owned company was issued with its first breach notice in December. In February, department of health staff were brought in to oversee all sterilisation procedures.
Hames, a former doctor, said the government was concerned with Serco’s performance, but said there was no reason for the public to be alarmed . He said it was not unheard of for surgical instruments to go missing at state-run hospitals.
“When I have been helping doing surgery in the past, as I have on numerous occasions, you find that sometimes packs don’t have all the instruments that you require and sometimes there’s a small delay getting those things,” he said.
“It’s not a critical incident but it’s something we are working to fix.”
Olson has called for Hames to be sacked.
Alleged incidents at Fiona Stanley hospital
- Bone fragments found on drill before being used to fix broken hand
- Patient’s hand surgery delayed for three hours because equipment used the previous day not sterilised
- Heart surgery patient kept under anaesthetic because equipment was missing sterile pieces
- Patient with broken jaw kept under anaesthetic because staff given wrong equipment
- Sterilised pack labelled as being a light cable and camera discovered to be a drill during surgery
- Kit to fix patient’s broken leg missing screwdriver
- Improvised equipment used during liver surgery because piece missing from sterilised kit