Royal Adelaide Hospital elective admissions will be cancelled in nurses’ protest for more beds across health system
ELECTIVE admissions at the Royal Adelaide Hospital will be cancelled from next week if Health Minister Stephen Wade does not commit to opening 50 extra beds across the system.
ELECTIVE admissions at the Royal Adelaide Hospital will be cancelled from next week if Health Minister Stephen Wade does not commit to opening 50 extra beds across the system.
Several hundred nurses across all departments at the RAH met yesterday to discuss industrial action, as the emergency department was again stretched, with more than 100 patients waiting for treatment.
Australian Nursing and Midwifery Federation (SA Branch) secretary Elizabeth Dabars said that if Mr Wade would not commit to opening at least 50 subacute beds at the Repat Hospital, while also maintaining the extra beds currently open at Highgate and Hampstead, nurses would be forced to take action.
Starting today, nurses will be putting up posters, wearing badges, and handing out postcards addressed (postage paid) to the Health Minister.
If Mr Wade has not committed to extra beds by this Friday, nurses will hold rolling stop-work rallies across major metropolitan hospitals from Monday.
“If the situation doesn’t improve, from Thursday, October 18, we will be looking to cancel elective admissions requiring an overnight stay at the Royal Adelaide Hospital,’’ Professor Dabars said.
“We don’t take this action lightly but the system cannot cope with the existing emergency and urgent load.”
Mr Wade said the department had already taken “decisive” action, with 34 patients transferred from metropolitan beds to country hospitals in the past week.
“We continue to work on a range of strategies to ease pressure in our hospitals,’' he said.
“Some of these strategies are already in place and others will be rolled out progressively.
“My first and foremost commitment is to ensuring patients receive the care they need when they need it.”
Hospital-wide meetings of nurses will be held at Flinders Medical Centre and Lyell McEwin Hospital later this week to discuss taking appropriate action at those hospitals.
Prof Dabars is also calling for 20 extra mental health beds following reports of mental health patients being stuck in emergency departments for up to five consecutive days unable to receive treatment in an appropriate bed.
“We’d like to see 20 mental health beds at Ward 18 at the Repat, contingent on workforce,’’ she said.
The nurses’ union has been calling on the Minister to act on the solutions presented to him at a crisis meeting in September and has stepped up its campaigning amid increasing reports of precarious situations in emergency departments.
Lyell McEwin Hospital staff have reported being at almost double capacity, while a 98-year-old man was left ramped in an ambulance outside the Flinders Medical Centre for several hours last week.