MP who exposed Dr Death details intimidation by Queensland Health bosses
Former MP Rob Messenger has revealed he faced intimidation from Queensland Health bosses even before nurse Toni Hoffman approached him about Dr Death.
Crusading former MP Rob Messenger says he knew about Queensland Health’s “culture of fear” even before nurse Toni Hoffman came to him to blow the whistle on Bundaberg’s so-called Dr Death, surgeon Jayant Patel.
In an interview to coincide with the release of Hedley Thomas’s Sick to Death podcast, Mr Messenger has recalled fighting for Bundaberg Base Hospital staff from his earliest days as Nationals MP for the Wide Bay electorate of Burnett and allegedly being met with intimidation from senior health department bureaucrats.
Based on Thomas’s 2007 book, Sick to Death revisits the journalist’s investigation into India-born and educated American surgeon Mr Patel, who served as Bundaberg Base Hospital’s director of surgery between 2003 and 2005 and whose negligence was blamed for the deaths of 13 patients.
Nurses – including nurse unit manager of the hospital’s intensive care unit Ms Hoffman – were alarmed by Mr Patel’s shoddy performance almost immediately after he started at the regional public hospital.
But it was the traumatic death of 56-year-old patient Des Bramich which drove a desperate Ms Hoffman to seek Mr Messenger’s help in March 2005, setting off a chain of events that led to Mr Patel eventually being criminally charged with the manslaughter and grievous bodily harm of four patients.
The surgeon was found guilty and jailed in 2010, but the convictions were quashed by the High Court on appeal in 2012. Mr Patel pleaded guilty to fraud in 2013 and flew out of Australia, never to return.
But before Ms Hoffman contacted Mr Messenger about Mr Patel, the first-term MP already had experience advocating for the hospital’s concerned staff.
Hansard records Mr Messenger on his feet in parliament on May 11 2004 – four months after he was elected as a member of the Coalition opposition – demanding then premier Peter Beattie and health minister Gordon Nuttall order a “comprehensive independent review of healthcare services at Bundaberg Base Hospital”.
The government had denied there was a “crisis” in healthcare in Bundaberg, but Mr Messenger asked Mr Nuttall and Bundaberg Labor MP Nita Cunningham to look up at parliament’s public gallery where three mental health nurses with a combined 90 years’ nursing experience were sitting.
“They know that there is a crisis at the Bundaberg Base Hospital … these brave women … have been assaulted, abused and bullied by patients.”
He said the women had also been bullied and harassed by Queensland Health managers, and were desperate to have their issues of patient care, staff safety, security, cost-cutting and hygiene properly investigated.
“Unfortunately, I have a feeling that the experiences these nurses are prepared to share with us will be only the tip of the health mismanagement iceberg,” Mr Messenger said in parliament.
The former MP – who later became an independent and lost his seat to current LNP MP Stephen Bennett at the 2012 election – told The Australian that within 30 minutes of his parliamentary speech, then Queensland Health director-general Steve Buckland had a meeting with him and the three nurses.
He said Dr Buckland reacted angrily when Mr Messenger pushed back against the bureaucrat’s suggestion there be a mental health unit investigation.
“I said … ‘the whole hospital needs an investigation’. And he picked up his hand and slammed it down in front of me,” Mr Messenger said.
“He went off his nut and he said ‘I don’t care if you’re a member of parliament’.
“Later on, (someone) said to me that’s his way of intimidating and showing who’s the boss and to those nurses.”
Mr Messenger said $41m was later spent upgrading the mental health unit, but the Queensland Health tactics were fresh in his mind when he was approached by Ms Hoffman the following year.
“I knew what sort of culture and what intimidation tactics that the very top levels of Queensland Health were using against staff … I had an understanding of the culture of fear that just permeated Queensland Health at the time.”
A commission of inquiry into the Patel affair and other Queensland public hospital issues found Dr Buckland failed to take any action to suspend Mr Patel from duty or stop him from performing operations before the surgeon left the country in April 2005, despite knowing of serious concerns with Mr Patel’s skills and high complications rate.
Do you know more? Contact Hedley Thomas and the team at sicktodeath@theaustralian.com.au
Subscribers hear new episodes of Sick to Death first. Listen at sicktodeathpodcast.com, in The Australian’s app, or search for “Sick to Death” on Apple Podcasts to connect your subscription.
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