Editor’s view: Pivotal failure in sick health system

The tragic story of Nikkole Southwell, who was left to sit in the waiting room of a Queensland hospital holding her miscarried foetus in a biohazard bag, does not reflect the health system of a modern, wealthy first world nation. It reflects chaos and a flailing system.

Nikkole Southwell experienced horrific care from Ipswich hospital after her miscarriage. Picture: David Clark

That a woman was left to sit in the waiting room of a major Queensland hospital holding her miscarried foetus in a biohazard bag has to represent a pivotal moment for the state government in its approach to the health portfolio.

The tragic story of Nikkole Southwell which appears in today’s Courier Mail does not reflect the health system of a modern, wealthy first world nation.

It reflects chaos and a flailing system.

Ms Southwell lost her baby in April and was taken to Ipswich Hospital by ambulance and placed in an emergency room where the curtains were blood stained and not even properly closed.

Ms Southwell said staff used her partner’s phone torch to look at her cervix before discharging her, leaving her to face a series of further bungles in her follow-up care.

The following evening, she woke in agony as she began miscarrying and was taken to hospital by ambulance.

During the journey staff placed parts of the foetus into a biohazard bag.

It was that bag that Ms Southwell was left clutching as she sat in a waiting room with two sheets wrapped around her, bleeding onto the seat.

Ipswich mum Breanna Tottle. Picture: Breanna Tottle

That such a horrific event could occur in our state is utterly unacceptable and, from Ms Southwell’s point of view, quite possibly unforgivable.

Yet the uncomfortable fact is that Ms Southwell’s hideous experience is likely to be repeated, given similar situations have occurred in the past.

Ipswich Hospital patient Breanna Tottle also made a recent public call for the hospital to be more accountable after her own three-month miscarriage nightmare during which she was told on one occasion to simply “go home’’.

There is clearly something structurally wrong with the state’s health system and the problem will not be solved by replacing former health minister Yvette D’Ath with present Health Minister Shannon Fentiman.

Opposition Leader David Crisafulli has quite rightly seized on this issue, starting the week on Monday with his 32nd health crisis town hall meeting in Cooktown where he says locals have watched health services decline over the past eight years due to the “chaos and crisis” of the state government.

Birthing services in that far northern community have been closed for 18 months while mothers (as Crisafulli puts it) are left playing “Russian roulette’’ and having children in their homes, much as women in isolated north Queensland did more than a century ago.

Further south in central Queensland, the Opposition has identified $36m in vital health services promised to the Rockhampton and Livingstone regions which are yet to be delivered.

Health Minister Fentiman, who has extended her sympathies to Ms Southwell and her family, says a review is underway of Ms Southwell’s experience, and declared women’s health is one of her top priorities.

Nikkole Southwell alleges she received inadequate care at Ipswich Hospital throughout her missed miscarriage. Picture: Supplied/Nikkole Southwell

But Ms Fentiman represents a government which has been in power for nearly a decade.

To an increasingly cynical electorate, it is a government which is rapidly running out of excuses.

We are nowhere near being a third world nation, with Queensland alone allocating more than $23bn to health in 2022/23.

The Opposition, the media and the people of Queensland have a responsibility to maintain their vigilance over what is happening in Queensland Health and refuse to accept it as commonplace.

We must never permit our government, which draws quite liberally on the wealth of taxpayers, to burden us with a chaotic public health system that has no place in Australia.