Anna Cocks, Dr Michelle Porter weigh in on Gympie Hospital crisis

A crowd of more than 100 people has shared and heard a series harrowing experiences from patients caught up in the loss of services from Gympie Hospital, including a doctor’s claim that sick patients were being sent home too early, and an expectant mother who broke down while sharing her ordeal.

Claims of Gympie Hospital staff learning about the loss of key services from patients were among a raft of troubling patient experiences revealed by residents themselves at a public meeting about the state of the facility on Tuesday.

About 100 people gathered at the Senior Citizen’s Centre to air their concerns about the hospital, which has been the centre of controversy in the past 12 months due to ongoing service closures and shortfalls.

These included the sudden closure and reopening of the children’s ward in 2021, and the shuttering of the fracture clinic in June 2022.

The meeting was hosted by State LNP Opposition leader David Crisafulli, opposition spokeswoman for health Ros Bates and Gympie MP Tony Perrett as part of a wider push for improvements to an ailing Queensland Health service.

For more than an hour guests opened up about their experiences as patients at the hospital.

Long Flat resident Anna Cocks, supported by MP Ros Bates, fought back tears as she told the assembled crowd of the problems she had encountered getting her children help at the Gympie Hospital.

Long Flat mother of six Anna Cocks said the issues were made clear when her daughter broke her arm.

“We were shoved out into some funny little room out the back and apologised to numerous times,” Mrs Cocks said. Staff told her they were trying to find space to treat them.

She was then told she and her daughter would have to go to the Sunshine Coast University Hospital for follow-ups.

“He said ‘yes I’m sorry, we’ve just been told by patients actually that our fracture clinic is closed’,” she said.

It followed earlier experiences in which she said Gympie Hospital staff were doing their best with a bad situation.

She recounted the birth of her twins, which was supposed to occur at the SCUH.

However, she was sent back to Gympie in the mistaken belief she was not in labour and ultimately gave birth at the less-resourced Gympie Hospital instead.

Emily McGourty called on the community to get “loud” over the loss of services from Gympie Hospital, having launched a petition which helped in the campaign to reopen the children’s ward in 2021.

“I wasn‘t supposed to deliver there, they were not very well equipped for what happened that night,” Mrs Cocks said.

She said they brought a midwife with paediatric training up from a lower floor as they did “not have paediatric facilities or special care nurseries” at Gympie.

One of her placentas immediately ruptured after the birth of the first twin, Mrs Cocks said.

“I started haemorrhaging … they needed to perform an immediate breach extraction on (her second twin).

“These are all the reasons why I was supposed to deliver at SCUH,” Mrs Cocks said, fighting back tears as she spoke.

“I had no epidurals and no morphine, and they broke her water, they reached in, they grabbed her leg and pulled her down into my birth canal.”

Mark Chapman said he had been given a clear warning by his specialist when it came to treating the “multiple things wrong with me”.

Mr Chapman said he had to receive treatment at Brisbane but due to changes under the last LNP State Government he was only allowed to claim 100km maximum round trip for an appointment.

LNP opposition leader and meeting host David Crisafulli listened on as guests recounted their experiences as patients at the hospital.

This did not even cover a trip to services at Noosa or the Sunshine Coast, he said.

“Gympie is our primary care centre,” Mr Chapman said.

“At the moment if I go to Gympie I will come out in the morgue.

“I’ve been told by the specialist I see ‘if you want to die go to Gympie’.”

GP Michelle Porter said health professionals outside the hospital were experiencing the fall-out too.

“What I’m seeing more and more is sick people being discharged from hospital,” Dr Porter said.

“It’s not the nurses and doctors, they’re doing the best they can with the lack of resources they have.

“I’m getting increasingly long instructions on discharge summaries – when I get them – to follow up things that are part of the standard admission.

“Sometimes patients are being pulled out without the blood tests being checked that were done that day.

“I’m sure I’m not the only GP in town who’s seen a patient not long after discharge who are clearly not safe to be at home, particularly when they’re elderly.

“You can’t activate any home services at the flick of a pen.”

The lack of services in Gympie was another problem.

“As far as I know our (operating) theatres are being used at about 25 per cent of their capacity.

“Queensland Health must be spending an absolute fortune doing travel allowance to get people down to the Sunshine Coast.”

Gympie MP Tony Perrett watched on as the public detailed where they had encountered shortfalls in Gympie’s services.

Dr Porter said she did not see the cost benefit in sending “60 patients a day down instead of getting a gastroenterologist or a general surgeon … up here to do these things”.

Emily McGourty, who successfully campaigned for the reopening of the children’s ward, said the lack of services at the hospital had taken a toll on families.

“It splits families having to drive children away to care,” she said.

“To take services off regional children is appalling.

“But now to be losing more services, we need to get loud … ‘no’ is not an answer and we can’t accept anything less.”

A petition calling for the reopening of Gympie’s fracture clinic, spruiked at the meeting, has so far attracted more than 5500 signatures.