No end in sight over fight for cardiac services at Sydney Children’s Hospital

The fight over cardiac surgery between the children’s hospitals at Randwick and Westmead has taken another turn after nurses claimed they had no faith that the governing body would resolve the heated issue.

Nurses claim they have no confidence in the governing body of Sydney’s two children’s hospitals to deliver on a promise to restore cardiac services at Randwick.

Next week staff at the Sydney Children’s Hospital at Randwick (SCH) will meet with the executive of Sydney Children’s Hospital Network (SCHN) — but leaked correspondence reveals a continuation of the “irreconcilable” conflict between the two hospitals that has simmered for years.

Protest over cardiac services at Sydney Childrens Hospital at Randwick have been ongoing. Picture: Nicola Berkovic

A letter from intensive care nurses at SCH to the executive team of the SCHN asks serious questions about the ability of the SCHN to restore cardiac services at Randwick due to the apparent reluctance of cardiac surgeons at Westmead to travel.

After several reviews, reports and recommendations, the SCHN said it would restore cardiac services at SCH in January after years of reducing surgery at Randwick in favour of more at the Children’s Hospital Westmead (CHW).

But CHW cardiologists went public in February disagreeing with the board decision.

The Children's Hospital at Westmead currently conducts most cardiac surgery.

“Meeting with you and the executive team last Thursday left us with no clarity or any assurances that cardiac surgery would be reinstated to SCH,” the SCH nurses wrote.

“As nurses our sole concern is the safety of our patients. We have no vested interest in cardiac surgical cases being done on our campus and we are upset and frustrated that the politics of paediatric cardiology services in NSW is having detrimental effects on the families in our hospital.”

Staff at SCH have alleged the network is “allocating resources and supporting the initiation of a cardiac transplant program at Westmead” instead of “the reinstatement of routine cardiac surgery at Randwick”.

The SCHN has said it will appoint psychologists to help sort out the conflict between the two hospitals but nursing staff said they were “confused and saddened” after being told by the SCHN that: “Cardiologists are ‘afraid’ to come to Randwick”.

“The day we met you (SCHN chief executive Cathryn Cox) and the executive team, another child was being transferred to Westmead for care that the cardiologists chose not to provide in SCH,” the nurses wrote.

The Children's Hospital at Westmead

“That child’s parents were terrified of transferring their child and pleaded with the bedside nurses: ‘Why can’t we stay here’?”

The letter claims the transferred patient coincided with an overflow in intensive care beds at CHW resulting in “a request for nursing staff from SCH to travel to Westmead”.

The letter also said: “Children’s operations have been cancelled at Westmead because of ICU capacity”.

The SCH takes the majority of emergency retrievals across the state and services the critical premature and sick babies delivered at the adjacent Royal Hospital for Women. The SCHN determined that low to moderate cardiac surgery should be reinstated at the SCH but offering heart-lung bypass, or ECMO, which is often required at short notice in emergencies, is in question.

“The suggestion that routine cardiac surgery would not include bypass in SCH is appalling,” the nurses wrote.

A cardiac surgeon at CHW who asked for anonymity told The Saturday Telegraph that surgeons travelling across the two sites was “not logistically possible”.

“Irreconcilable conflicts” between the two hospitals was identified by Professor Richard Henry in his review in 2019.

A senior source at SCH said: “We are no closer to getting cardiac surgery back to Randwick, despite all the reviews, promises and decisions”.

Originally published as No end in sight over fight for cardiac services at Sydney Children’s Hospital