Caleb Bond: The whole argument over hospital beds has descended into childish farce and we are the ones who pay
LONG-SUFFERING patients wait in pain as the public pays the price for the disgraceful behaviour of SA’s nursing union, writes Caleb Bond.
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HOW disgraceful that the Australian Nursing and Midwifery Federation will this week willingly and openly prevent people in pain from having surgery.
The whole argument over hospital beds has descended into childish farce and we are the ones who pay.
Last week, ANMF state secretary Elizabeth Dabars threatened to cancel elective surgeries unless 50 more beds were made available for public patients. Health Minister Stephen Wade said he had answered the call and found 30 beds in country hospitals, including Strathalbyn, and 20 in private hospitals, including Flinders and Calvary.
But that wasn’t good enough, apparently.
On FIVEaa yesterday morning, Ms Dabars said she was “adjusting” her request in light of the State Government’s action because it was supposedly not good enough. In other words, she moved the goalposts.
She insisted “there are games being played” and she had asked for information on the beds from the Government.
Fast forward an hour and Ms Dabars was being interviewed on ABC Radio, only this time the specifics of the extra beds were being read to her.
Mr Wade said the information had been sent to the union last week — yet Ms Dabars claimed she had never seen it. Somehow, I find that hard to believe.
A GP called up to speak against cancelling surgeries and Ms Dabars invited him to sit in an emergency department and decide who was more deserving of the beds.
My jaw hit the floor. It was an utterly woeful performance from Ms Dabars in both interviews. She struggled to answer questions straight and maintained the union had been “forced into” banning elective surgeries.
They have, at least, agreed not to cancel category one or two surgeries, such as cancer — after the intervention of the SA Employment Tribunal. But that still leaves three, four and five.
That includes surgeries such as knee and hip replacements, for which people have been on multi-year waiting lists. They have held on all this time, in pain, and now the nursing union will tell them to wait even longer because they’re having a showdown with the Government.
Where were Ms Dabars and the ANMF when the previous Labor government instituted Transforming Health and closed the Repatriation General Hospital — where the current Government now wants to reopen beds?
Why did they not threaten industrial action of this scale over an issue that was highly unpopular among nurses and arguably started the rot we now see today?
Why did they not take such a strong stance against ambulance ramping? Why, only after the Liberal Government has been elected, are they now finally threatening action over beds?
In a union newsletter from March 2015, Ms Dabars made lukewarm noises about opposing the closure of the Repat but said she was “deeply engaged” with the government on Transforming Health.
She went on to quote French poet Victor Hugo: “Change your opinions, keep to your principles; change your leaves, keep intact your roots”. Words, perhaps, she could revisit now.
The ANMF even hired a “Transforming Health liaison officer” to work with staff.
That’s money that could have been used to fight the proposal.
The closest the union was to ever taking action against Transforming Health was threatening to not answer phones, do paperwork and clean beds in 2016 when they were at loggerheads over their pay agreement.
Where was the big stink when SA Health last year revealed the new Royal Adelaide Hospital would have 71 fewer overnight beds?
Imagine building a new hospital with fewer beds when you know the health system is already operating at capacity.
And let us never forget, too, that our RAH, with its 700-odd beds, cost us $2.4 billion to build while Glasgow opened a new 1677 bed Queen Elizabeth University Hospital in 2015 for about $1 billion less.
It is simply not good enough to tell surgery patients they will have to wait while the union has a fight with the Government. It is nothing short of pathetic.