Comment: How was festering mess at Mackay allowed to happen?

The Queensland government cannot take away the pain of the victims of Mackay Base Hospital, but it can listen and provide paths to justice and compensation, writes Madura McCormack.

If the objective was to first do no harm, then a group of medicos and executives at Mackay Base Hospital catastrophically failed in their duty for years.

The independent report into the obstetrics and gynaecology department at the beleaguered hospital found “systematic failures at all levels throughout the organisation”.

Ultimately it was the women of Mackay who paid the price for the insolence of the small number of professionals who failed to protect the wellbeing of their patients.

It is the women of Mackay who live with gastrointestinal trauma, ongoing pain and scars physical and mental because those meant to listen to their concerns and investigate them did not.

Three babies lost their lives, in part because their mothers weren’t taken seriously.

Samantha Robertson, Hayley Mietze, and Jess were denied entry to a media conference at Mackay Base Hospital on Friday and watched it via livestream but were later offered a meeting with Health Minister Yvette D’Ath.

It is the junior doctors, the nurses and the midwives who have to live with the anger of knowing harm could have been prevented if their superiors had paid heed to the multiple alarms they raised.

Investigators popped the lid of a festering, rotting mess and found a “problematic workplace culture at many different levels, with different contributors” which unless identified and fixed would “likely occur in future”.

It remains unclear how this cancer was allowed to set in at the hospital in the first place, eating away at the organisation for so long.

Health Minister Yvette D’Ath, who, based on recent goings-on in her department, has due cause to question the quality of advice she receives, has moved to ensure these safety failures don’t happen elsewhere.

She confirmed a statewide safety and quality improvement program across the public hospital system.

The government cannot wind back the clock and take away the pain of the victims.

But the least it can do is to listen and to provide appropriate paths to justice and compensation.