Oakden nursing home ‘run like a zoo’, inquest into death of Graham Rollbusch hears

STAFF at the disgraced Oakden aged-care home were manipulative, incompetent and would sabotage any efforts to improve standards in the lead-up to the 2008 murder of resident Graham Rollbusch, an inquest has heard.

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STAFF at the disgraced Oakden aged-care home were manipulative, incompetent and would sabotage any efforts to improve standards in the lead-up to the 2008 murder of resident Graham Rollbusch, an inquest has heard.

On Wednesday, State Coroner Mark Johns was told the Oakden facility — which was today slammed by ICAC Commissioner Bruce Lander in a report — had been described by temporary nurses as “a zoo”.

Mr Johns is holding an inquest into the death of palliative care patient Mr Rollbusch, 70, who was attacked by dementia sufferer Peter Palmer in early 2008.

The inquest has highlighted the shocking conditions at the State Government-run facility.

Independent nursing adviser Carla Baron told the inquest she was brought in to the facility by the Commonwealth Government after Oakden failed to meet accreditation standards in August 2007.

She said when Oakden was issued a six-month sanction, it meant there was a serious risk to the health and wellbeing of residents.

Graham Rollbusch, 70, died after being attacked by another resident, Peter Palmer, at the Oakden nursing home.

She said Oakden service manager Julie Harrison — named in Mr Lander’s report as guilty of maladministration — was more concerned about staff than residents.

“Julie kept talking about how devastating this was for the staff,” she said.

“You have to get the staff on board to look after the residents but Julie was determined that her job was to look after the staff.”

Ms Baron said when she did her first audit of the facility, she found it was in an “appalling” state.

She said the palliative care room was being used to store the clothing of deceased residents, staff were storing their food in residents’ fridges and used cordial bottles were being used as pitchers.

“We saw appalling, appalling medication management,” she said.

“But then staff would just go, ‘well that’s how we do it in mental health’.”

She said both herself and experienced nurse Sharon Olsson would try to explain to staff that it was not correct mental health practice but nothing would change.

“We never got over staff resistance — there was never any co-operation, if you like, from staff and that was the issue that prompted us to go through management and say, ‘we are not getting support’.

“In fact, at times, we believed there was sabotage occurring.

“The staff were very good at manipulating — they were very manipulative.

“They had more staff then any other aged-care facility we had been to — the difficulty was not the numbers of staff, the difficulty was the knowledge and skill base of the staff and the attitude.

“It was not a well-organised, well-run staffing situation.

“They had to use a lot of agency staff and one of the things that happened to us was that a lot of the agency staff knew us.

“They’d say, ‘oh, thank God you’re here — this place is a zoo and I’m not coming back here because it’s awful’.

“The staff would work a shift or two and say they would not go back to that place.”

Ms Baron said the major problem was the lack of management and leadership.
“Julie Harrison was not competent for the position (service manager) — she was always pleasant, always charming, always gave the appearance of trying the be helpful but she wasn’t good at delivering.”

On Tuesday, Intensive and Acute Care Statewide Services nursing director Sharon Olsson told the inquest she was also brought into Oakden in the wake of the failed accreditation bid.

She told the inquest that her concerns were about emancipated residents, poor medication management, broken furniture and a lack of contemporary training for nurses.

Ms Olsson said Mrs Baron, her husband Neil and clinical psychologist Fiona Meredith were also brought in to help fix standards at the facility — but she said their efforts were fruitless.

She said a complaint to the then-Health and Community Complaints Commissioner Leena Sudano was met with the response: “Look after our future careers.”