SA doctors protest against hospital overcrowding with T-shirt slogan campaign

South Aussie doctors are angry about hospital conditions – angry enough to dump their suits and scrubs and campaign with their T-shirts.

Emergency specialists at the Royal Adelaide Hospital have shared their darkest fears about the state’s capacity to respond to a real disaster, given the system is already stretched to breaking point.

More than 20 RAH ED doctors supported their union on Monday wearing protest T-shirts with slogans such as “Hospital overcrowding harms you and me” and “We need space to keep you safe”.

While many did not wish to be named, they told The Advertiser that just last week, on one occasion 63 of the 69 ED beds were full.

“If we‘d had something like a bus crash or a major fire that day, we would have actually had nowhere to see those severely unwell patients, let alone the chest pains that present or the older person that has had a fall at home,” one specialist said.

“So by having all of those patients not able to move through into the rest of the hospital, we simply don’t have space to see emergency patients.

“Our problem is not the people who don’t necessarily need admission to hospital. Those can be managed … quickly. It’s people who actually need admission to hospital. That is the biggest difficulty at the moment.”

Dr Lesley Ng and Dr Julianne Schliebs at the Royal Adelaide Hospital ED wearing the SASMOA protest slogan t-shirts. Picture: Tom Huntley

The doctors noted many patients with chronic conditions have not had access to elective surgery for such a long time that their condition was worsening.

SA Salaried Medical Officers Association chief industrial officer Bernadette Mulholland said the union had put further industrial action on hold for three weeks, to enable talks with the government and the employer.

“These are doctors who are trained to provide emergency care not disaster care,” she said.

“They’re providing disaster care simply because of the overwhelming number of patients that are coming into our hospitals … What we want to do is work with the government, work with the emergency department doctors and all clinicians to find systemic solutions across our hospital network.”

Ms Mulholland said one of the issues was that NDIS patients were “waiting far too long in this hospital” for a more suitable place to find the care they need.

SASMOA Chief Industrial Officer Bernadette Mulholland speaks to the media with doctors at the Royal Adelaide Hospital ED wearing protest slogan t-shirts. Picture: Tom Huntley

She also said the problem of not enough beds and not enough people to staff them had emerged over the past decade, not just the last term.

The Central Adelaide Local Health Network released a statement in the afternoon recognising the “genuine concerns raised by our Emergency Department doctors” and vowed to work with doctors on solutions.

It was agreed that clinicians could wear T-shirts to raise awareness of ED and system issues.

“We would like to acknowledge and thank our workforce for their ongoing commitment to caring for our patients, and we want to work with our staff to improve our system wide response for our patients and the community,” CALHN said in a statement.

Supplied Editorial SA Salaried Medical Officers Association protest T-shirts

Opposition health spokeswoman Ashton Hurn objected to the suggestion that the emergency health system had reached crisis point because the former government hadn’t been listening to the concerns of health workers.

“I think that the union and frontline workers indeed have been under extraordinary pressure for a very long period of time and I would argue that that predates even the former government,” she said.

“Our health system is under extraordinary pressure, the former (Labor) government built the Royal Adelaide Hospital, it built it far too small and now it’s coming home to roost.”

Ms Hurn accused the government of hypocrisy after Labor supported ambulance officers daubing protest messages on ambulances prior to the election yet stood by as the Central Adelaide Local Health Network tried to block medicos from wearing the T-shirts. But the SA Employment Tribunal ruled in favour of the doctors.

I am in awe of @92Ash_ This young woman has devoted her life to saving others. Ash has been through the ringer. Ash was warned by Govt for speaking out (which is a breach of every democratic principle we hold dear) but Ash wasn’t deterred. I think she is an amazing role model! pic.twitter.com/UFqWN22yO0

— Tom Koutsantonis MP (@TKoutsantonisMP) March 23, 2022

The western suburbs rejects Marshall’s Government treatment of our ambos & everyone that needs emergency care. pic.twitter.com/OVawHViTzO

— Tom Koutsantonis MP (@TKoutsantonisMP) March 5, 2022

Health Minister Chris Picton said the union had made clear “the issue is not the new government but the significant lack of resolve in fixing this issue over many years”.

“The Liberals need to answer how they let the situation get so bad by focusing on redundancies of staff during the pandemic,” he said.

“As SASMOA makes clear, the increased demand across our hospitals should have been identified and addressed by the previous government years ago.

“The new government will continue to work with emergency department doctors, build more beds, and hire more doctors and nurses to fix the mess we have inherited.

“We are investing a record $2.4bn extra in health services, including hundreds more doctors and nurses and more than 500 new hospital beds to address the blockages causing these issues.”