Lady Cilento Children’s Hospital name change push by doctors

BRISBANE’S children’s hospital has been under fire for its service delivery, now doctors are leading a campaign to change its name.

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DOCTORS at Queensland’s Lady Cilento Children’s Hospital are leading a campaign to change its name, arguing it is confusing patients and their families, and has little recognition outside the state.

The Sunday Mail can reveal more than 250 doctors and staff at the hospital have signed a petition calling for it to be renamed the Queensland Children’s Hospital, the name the project was given when it was first started.

One of the doctors leading the charge, Dr Ben Whitehead – who chairs the medical staff association – said they intended to hand their petition to Health Minister Steven Miles next week.

It is the latest push by doctors who have been lobbying to change the name ever since the former Newman government named it the Lady Cilento Children’s Hospital after pioneering medical practitioner, journalist and author Phyllis Cilento, ahead of its opening in November 2014.

Lady Cilento Children’s Hospital in Brisbane

Dr Whitehead said the name was still causing confusion four years later with some families mistakenly believing the hospital was private.

“We do have problems with patients or families who might need to use the hospital not being sure if it is the right place to go,” Dr Whitehead said.

“We certainly do have people contact my department, the rheumatology department, and say ‘I can’t afford to come’ because they think it is a private hospital.

“The hospital is the only tertiary children’s hospital for the whole state so the sickest of the sick children, that’s where they go.

“We feel that the name needs to reflect that it is a Queensland-wide institution and that sort of gets lost a bit with the current name.”

Dr Whitehead said the hospital’s name also caused confusion internationally, impacting on doctors as they attempted to present research to peers at leading conferences overseas.

“It is also to the point where lots of doctors, when they go to present their research or their findings overseas, don’t actually use the name because they don’t feel it’s an appropriate name.

“There’s a lost opportunity for recognition of the hospital as Queensland’s premier children’s institution.

“This is something that the taxpayers built. This is something for all Queenslanders to be proud of.

“We feel that changing the name back to the Queensland Children’s Hospital will really go a long way to solving a lot of those issues.”

Dr Whitehead said the medical staff association had passed several motions to call for a name change but decided it needed to do more and started the petition.

It has gathered more than 250 signatures from hospital staff in just three weeks.

Dr Whitehead said the petition would be handed to the Health Minister next week.

Dr Miles said he would consider the petition.

Concerns about the name were also raised in a report into the troubled commissioning of the Hospital in 2014.

“Consumers interviewed indicated that they had been engaged in the early stages of the design but that as the project progressed they felt progressively less engaged and less involved in the project,” the report found.

“An example was given that they had spent a month discussing potential names for the new hospital but at no stage had the name Lady Cilento been discussed. They were surprised when the name was announced, unilaterally by the Government at the time, and felt that their time had been wasted.”