Canberra Health Services CEO reflects on first six months, tackling workplace violence and wait times

Canberra Health Services CEO Bernadette McDonald reflects on her first six months in the role and prescribes more work to tackle workplace violence and improve waiting times

Canberra Health Services CEO Bernadette McDonald is known for roaming the wards to consult with her staff.

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By age 11, Bernadette McDonald had learnt how to set up a dialysis machine at home to treat her father Ron’s chronic kidney failure.

She recalls spending “half her childhood waiting around” for him to have various tests done at the Austin Hospital in Melbourne and her mum Marlene was a nurse.

So the stage was set for a career in health but Ms McDonald never envisaged she would one day be in charge of 7328 staff as the CEO of Canberra Health Services, with this month marking six months in the role.

Bernadette McDonald as a 23-year old nurse (right), her mother Marlene (top left) and her father Ron on his dialysis machine at their home in country Victoria.

“You grow up in a little country town and they say: ‘Well you can be a nurse, teacher or a secretary or you can go work in a shop down the road’,” Ms McDonald said.

“I thought: ‘I’m just going to do nursing and have a couple of kids and work part time and that’ll be me done.”

But her sharp intelligence, unflappable nature, knack for management and willingness to step outside her comfort zone meant the self-described “introvert” from Bairnsdale in east Gippsland in Victoria was destined for bigger things.

One of her first priorities is stamping out “occupational violence” as part of a broader strategy to improve the working environment for staff after a damning review of ACT’s Public Health services uncovered an alarming culture of bullying and harassment.

This included reports of staff being physically hurt, sexually harassed and abused at work.

Ms McDonald says building a positive workplace culture and improving waiting times are among her top priorities for the next six months.

Ms McDonald took the reins of CHS, which encompasses all public clinical health services in the ACT including Canberra Hospital, the University of Canberra Hospital, Community Health Centres, Walk-in-centres and the Centenary Hospital for Women and Children, at a challenging time.

Canberra’s rising population has driven unprecedented demand for services across the board and has led to worsening wait times for elective surgery and emergency department patients.

The latest quarterly snapshot of ACT Health released this month showed just 30 per cent of “urgent” emergency department patients were being treated on time, down from 36 per cent in the previous quarter.

Latest data from the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare shows emergency department patients in the ACT face the longest waits in the country.

One of her priorities over the next six months is continuing to address this through a “timely care strategy”, bolstered by $70 million in the budget over four years for a new digital health record, which will improve efficiency across the health system.

With “years of work to do”, she plans to stay CEO in the long term.

Calvary Hospital’s capacity to perform elective surgery is being expanded to take some weight off Canberra Hospital.

“My first priority was to listen to staff and understand what was happening … through consultation with 5000 of 7000 of our staff and 1000 patients,” she said.

“Number two was to build a new identity and unifying vision because the organisation was reasonably damaged.

“There were a lot of people who were cynical who thought nothing would ever change and what we have now is cautious optimism and hope is a word a lot of people are using which they weren’t when I arrived.

“Over the next six months I want us to finish off the work to determine our values and behaviours for the organisation and we’re about to embark on developing our strategic plan for the next three to five years.”

There is plenty more work to do to improve workplace culture, waiting times, access to services and plugging staffing gaps through a recruitment drive for more experienced pharmacists, anaesthetists and in medical imaging.

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Not to mention progressing ACT Health’s headline project — the new Surgical Procedures, Interventional Radiology and Emergency (SPIRE) Centre at The Canberra Hospital.

Ms McDonald is in it for the long haul.

“There’s a lot of work to do; this is years worth of work so as long as they’ll have me, I will stay,” she said.

“We are in the nation’s capital so we should be the nation’s leading hospital but that’s a journey.

“We have to shift the narrative which has been quite negative for a number of years and that’s very damaging to or staff.

“So I want to build up the trust in the community and have the nation’s leading reputation.”