Top medic to visit Queensland hospitals to discuss patient safety

The head of a medical college covering emergency specialists will visit two southeast Queensland hospitals today to discuss patient safety. It comes after he slammed practice at one hospital as “inhuman at best and torture at worst”.

THE head of a medical college covering emergency specialists will today visit Redland and Logan hospitals to discuss ongoing concerns about patient safety amid bed shortages and ambulance ramping.

The visit by Simon Judkins, the Australasian College for Emergency Medicine president, comes a day after 314 patients attended the Logan Hospital emergency department, which was the highest number recorded.

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Queensland Health insists patients are “generally treated inside four hours”.

But Dr Judkins said yesterday he had been told of mental health patients having to spend days in the Redland or Logan hospital EDs before being admitted to a bed. He described the practice as “inhuman at best and torture at worst”.

Dr Simon Judkins

“Put anybody in an emergency department for three or four days and they will suffer,” he said.

“For mental health patients, when they spend over 24 hours in emergency departments, which is not uncommon, they have increased levels of anxiety, they’re more likely to require sedation and can need to be physically restrained.

“Anybody who is in that sort of environment for that period time will get upset and angry.”

Melbourne-based Dr Judkins’ trip comes a month after Redland Hospital emergency physician Michael Cameron spoke out about bed shortages and patient safety concerns affecting hospitals across southeast Queensland.

Redland Hospital emergency physician Dr Michael Cameron last month took the extraordinary step of blowing the whistle on bed shortages and patient safety concerns. Picture: AAP/Steve Pohlner

“Like other hospitals we are struggling for space to put all our patients,” Dr Cameron wrote in an open letter to the people of Redlands about what to expect as a patient.

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

Dr Judkins said public hospital bed shortages across the southeast were so acute that some Redland and Logan patients requiring transfer to larger hospitals had “significant delays”.

“We do know that there have been patients with delayed transfers to tertiary facilities, particularly for cardiac problems, who have subsequently had cardiac arrests,” he said.

“There’s many, many examples of poor patient outcomes because of delays to care.”

Dr Judkins called on state and federal politicians to work together to better plan for Queensland’s future health needs.

“At the moment, the investment cycle seems to happen when there’s a crisis,” he said.

“I’m not sure that the way we manage the system reactively, instead of proactively, is really giving us the right reassurances that they actually know what they’re doing.

“Rises in emergency department presentations are happening everywhere. It’s predictable and can be managed.”

Dr Judkins said increasing numbers of patients turning up to EDs were not being matched by more frontline staff.

He singled out Redland, Logan and Cairns hospitals for particular mention.

The Courier-Mail has highlighted issues at all three hospitals, including severe nursing shortages in the Cairns Hospital ED.

Queensland Nurses and Midwives’ Union secretary Beth Mohle said the Cairns Hospital and Health Service had promised to employ additional nursing staff to alleviate stress on the ED.

As hospital EDs throughout the nation struggle with unprecedented patient numbers, Ms Mohle called for a “fundamental revisioning” of how health care was delivered in Australia focusing on a wellness, rather than an illness, model.

“Health care should be about keeping people as well as possible and we need to be quarantining funding for primary and preventive health care to reduce the burden on EDs and hospitals generally,” Ms Mohle said.

Queensland Health Minister Steven Miles announced plans for a hi-tech pop-up medical ward to be dropped in by crane to take pressure off Logan Hospital, providing 27 more beds in a transit care hub next to the ED.

He’s also promised an expansion of the Redland Hospital, including an intensive care unit, but has not provided a timeline.

A Queensland Health spokesman said Metro South Health clinicians, executives and Queensland Ambulance Service representatives held a forum to work towards a strategy for improving patient flows between its hospitals, including Redland and Logan.