Rather than face up to its litany of problems senior management seem interested only in defusing issues and deflecting blame. Source: News Corp Australia
THE adage that the first step to solving a problem is to admit you have one is strikingly applicable to the management of the Lady Cilento Children’s Hospital right now.
Rather than face up to its litany of problems – including question marks over the care provided to three children who have died – senior management seem interested only in defusing issues and deflecting blame.
This reached a farcical new height on Friday when the hospital was quizzed over the case of a 16-year-old girl who slept on the hospital lawn because conditions inside the ward, including nauseating odours, were unbearable. But rather than admit to a systemic problem and concede the hospital could have done so much more for the sick girl and her distressed mother – finding a more suitable room would be a start – senior staff have instead played word games with patients and their families.
It helps no one, for example, to brush off the girl’s concerns or, even worse, attempt to dissuade her from making a complaint with some sort of emotional blackmail that claims staff are at “breaking point”. That’s like police asking victims of crime not to press charges because law enforcers are currently overstretched. Attempting to manipulate public service consumers, to get them to behave in ways more convenient for managers than for taxpaying clients, is no way to run a billion-dollar enterprise.
Nor does it help to hide behind a nonsense defence and to label the mother’s posting on social media of a photograph of her daughter’s “lawn bed” as a mere wish “to share the view of the city in the background”. That simply insults everyone’s intelligence.
The sad fact the girl’s mother felt compelled to post the photograph out of sheer frustration and that her frustration still hasn’t been acknowledged by hospital management only adds insult to injury.
If staff at Lady Cilento are indeed at “breaking point” – and there’s much evidence to suggest they are – that’s a problem for the hospital’s senior management and the State Government to resolve.
It has nothing to do with patients who, ill and at their most vulnerable, expect and deserve only the highest level of care free of bureaucratic worry. The fact the girl’s mother expressed sympathy for the hospital’s overstretched workers indicates the family’s generous patience. But that generosity does not relieve senior management of its first responsibility to sick and injured children.
Even after this young woman’s nightmare – and after repeatedly delayed surgeries urgently needed for a 12-year-old boy and a 14-year-old girl, among others – the hospital apparently sees this crisis as one for public relations and not management.
Disturbingly, as we report today, doctors believe the hospital’s administrators are ignoring not just the concerns of patients but also of its own medicos.
Guyala Brimble-Bayles in her makeshift bed on the lawn area at Lady Cilento Children’s Hospital. Source: Supplied
Doctors say the hospital urgently requires extra beds and extra nurses as well as upgrades to its IT system to overcome booking issues. They also want the hospital’s management to start listening to them.
It is now clear problems within Lady Cilento are more than teething troubles for a hospital that has now been open for almost a year. The fact the Health Ombudsman has received 26 complaints about the Lady Cilento Hospital in 11 months suggests far deeper failures.
If the problems plaguing this hospital aren’t addressed in an open and transparent manner, they will inevitably reoccur, and at great human cost.
Senior management must put down their public relations guides and handy excuse files and admit there are significant issues they need to address as a priority. Only then will Queenslanders get the level of health care they expect and deserve.
HI-TECH FIGHT AGAINST TERROR
THE fight against terrorism and organised crime is only as efficient as the most recent technology. When those who wish to harm innocents go in for high-end gadgetry, so must our intelligence services and law enforcement officers.
That’s why crime gangs and dangerously anti-social groups and individuals will be resting a little less easily tonight.
As the Turnbull Government adopts revolutionary face-recognition technology capable of scanning and matching the images on every Australian driver’s licence – and, from next year, every passport and visa – criminals and terror cells now have almost no rock to crawl under. Civil libertarians bleating that it is undemocratic for any government to have access to virtually every citizen’s image is inevitable. But it is also wrongheaded. Driver’s licences, passports and visas are already government documents, drawn from databases that, to maintain safety and deliver social services, already contain details of our identities.
This new technology merely allows for immediate cross-referencing so that suspects can be caught as quickly as possible.
In this instance, the innocent have nothing to lose and everything, including their lives, to gain.
Responsibility for election comment is taken by Christopher Dore, corner of Mayne Rd & Campbell St, Bowen Hills, Qld 4006. Printed and published by NEWSQUEENSLAND (ACN 009 661 778). Contact details are available at www.couriermail.com.au/help/contact-us