Medical groups say single rooms at new Royal Adelaide Hospital ‘a risk for patients in emergencies’

LEADING medical groups are warning that building the new Royal Adelaide Hospital with only single rooms has increased the risk patients will not get swift help in an emergency.

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LEADING medical groups are warning that building the new Royal Adelaide Hospital with only single rooms has increased the risk patients will not get swift help in an emergency and say there is little evidence to suggest the design will have a major impact on stopping infections.

The Salaried Medical Officers’ Association has told The Advertiser the lack of any open wards has been driven by “dogma without good evidence behind it” and it holds fears that assistance to fragile patients confined to single rooms will be delayed due to lesser oversight.

The nurses’ union says the “jury is out” about the impact of single rooms on infection control and a strict handwashing regime is the best way to stop sickness spreading.

The new RAH, which is in the final construction stages and set to open for service in November, will be the nation’s first single-room only hospital and one of only a few in the world. The State Government has spruiked the design as being at the cutting edge of medical practice and claim isolating ­patients from each other will limit the spread of infections between patients.

However, the Opposition is now also questioning whether the increased construction and operating costs of a single- room hospital will actually deliver better medical outcomes.

Health Minister Jack Snelling in an emergency room at the new Royal Adelaide Hospital. Picture: Emma Brasier

SASMOA president David Pope said he feared the lack of open wards limited the hospital’s ability to deal with a surge of patients and questioned its value for controlling infections. “To go to 100 per cent single rooms significantly reduces your flexibility as well in that if you have some sort of crisis it’s very hard to squeeze extra people in,” he said.

“Ultimately, the big problem with single rooms is you need a lot more staff around because you don’t have other sets of eyes observing things to alert nurses. “It was essentially a lot of dogma without good evidence behind it.”

Dr Pope said he had treated patients who refused to be put in single rooms. “They feel isolated and can’t see the staff as often so get concerned that if something happened to them there would be no one around to observe it, and they’re probably right,” he said.

Australian Nursing and Midwifery Federation SA operations and strategy director Rob Bonner says latest studies show the “jury is still out” about the value of single rooms.

Health Minister Jack Snelling said public patients should receive high-class facilities.

“If it’s good enough for patients in private hospitals to have single rooms than why doesn’t David Pope think it’s good enough for public hospital patients?” Mr Snelling said.

Opposition health spokesman Stephen Wade said the community would pay a high price for the Government playing politics with the new RAH.