Emergency doctor blows whistle on Redland Hospital crisis

The Australian Medical Association Queensland president has thrown his support behind doctors after an emergency physician spoke out about bed shortages and patient safety concerns plaguing his hospital and others around Brisbane.

THE Australian Medical Association Queensland president has backed concerns about the lack of facilities plaguing Brisbane hospitals.

Emergency physician Michael Cameron had told The Courier-Mail the Redland Hospital had failed to expand with the region’s rapidly growing population, prompting him to pen an open letter to the people of the Redlands about what to expect as a patient.

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AMAQ President Dr Dilip Dhupelia said he “absolutely” shared doctors’ concerns about the lack of facilities and services compromising patient care.

It comes after Dr Cameron warned people they could wait days to be admitted to hospital from the Redland Hospital emergency department.

Dr Dilip Dhupelia, Australian Medical Association Queensland president.

“Like other public hospitals we are struggling for space to put all our patients,” Dr Cameron wrote.

“They often wait for days in my ED for a bed in our hospital or another hospital.”

Dr Dilip Dhupelia said the AMAQ had been pushing the issue “for a while” but he focused the issue on people who go to emergency departments unnecessarily.

“People need to question themselves why they go to the emergency department, the word emergency means some crisis of some sort, it is not a place for services,” Dr Dhupelia told ABC radio this morning.

He said emergency department staff were stretched thin by people who present to hospital who health issues that are not an emergency and “clog and clutter” emergency departments, making “busy doctors busier”.

Veteran emergency doctor Michael Cameron has blown the whistle on Redland Hospital issues. Picture: Steve Pohlner/AAP

He said he had not yet had the opportunity to speak with Dr Cameron and the Metro South Hospital and Health District.

“We know for a fact there is a significant growth of population on the southside and … the growth of services need to accommodate that,” Dr Dhupelia said.

When asked if the hospital had failed to keep up with that population growth, the AMAQ president said “infrastructure doesn’t happen overnight”.

As the blame game begins, Dr Dhupelia said when physicians such as Dr Cameron speak up, they need to be heard “because they’re the people on the ground”.

But he said the Redland Hospital emergency department was one of the busiest, and he thinks “life will be easier if people in Redlands actually consider why they’re going to the emergency department, so beds are not cluttered up” as infrastructure and workforce planning continues.

Speaking out because of concerns for “patient safety and comfort” Dr Cameron had told The Courier-Mail: “You may not be aware that at Redland Hospital we lack several key specialties (eg orthopaedics, urology).

“If you need to be admitted under such a specialist you can go private or wait in the queue for a bed at the Princess Alexandra or Logan Hospital. Since those hospitals’ EDs also have patients queuing for beds, significant delays are inevitable. In clinical care, that matters.

Ambulances outside Redland Hospital

For example, elderly patients with hip fractures, fared better with earlier intervention, the veteran ED doctor explained in an interview with The Courier-Mail.

Dr Cameron, who has worked for a decade at the Redland Hospital, which services Redland City and Brisbane’s southern bayside suburbs, said the facility provided “first-class emergency medical care”.

“The staff are all well trained, the Emergency Department is well equipped,” he said.

But he said the lack of an intensive care unit, not enough inpatient beds and limited access to key medical specialists was compromising patient care.

Dr Cameron said that at times of overcrowded ICUs across Brisbane, Redlands patients needing intensive care had sometimes had to be transferred to Caboolture, Ipswich or Gold Coast hospitals.

That required the patient being accompanied by an ED physician and specialist nurse, taking them away from the Redland Hospital ED for hours.

“It leaves a hole in the staff for as many hours as it takes,” Dr Cameron said, adding clinicians had been begging for an inter-hospital transfer service to lessen the load.

A Queensland Health spokesman said a new Redland Hospital Infrastructure Master Plan, including an ICU and expansion of medical specialty services, was “in the approval stage”.

“We’re committed to finding ways to constantly improve the healthcare we deliver and a lot of this is led by clinicians on the ground,” the spokesman said.

“That’s why over the past two years we’ve increased Redland Hospital’s budget by $27 million and its clinical workforce by more than 60 nurses and 24 doctors.

“We’re delivering a raft of capital improvements including an expansion to its emergency department and an upgrade to the maternity unit.”

Dr Cameron said Redland Hospital had a mental health ward, but patients often waited for days in the ED before they could be admitted.

“Lights are always on, it’s always noisy, there’s high stress going on,” Dr Cameron said. “They’re given all the food and fluids that they need and medications but it’s not a very quiet or calm environment.

“Often we have two or three or more patients in the emergency department with mental health problems waiting for a bed.”

The 60-year-old, who publicly exposed extreme pressures at Logan Hospital in 2008 after quitting and moving to the Redlands, said he was speaking out again because “patient-centred care is what we need to aim for”.

“It’s become more and more of a lag between requirement of beds and actual beds available,” he said.

“It’s normal to have a full emergency department and ambulances ramping to get in.

“We’ve got a lot of our emergency department beds taken up by people who should be in a ward but there’s no bed for them.”

Dr Cameron said the Redland Hospital had enough land to expand but had been “overlooked” in favour of other southeast Queensland facilities needing upgrades.

On the plus side, it has free hospital parking.