Nurses, doctors in push for children’s hospitals overhaul

Senior nurses, doctors push for major overhaul of Sydney’s two major children’s hospitals.

Doctors at the Sydney Children’s Hospital at Randwick have voted overwhelmingly in favour of leaving the network that runs NSW’s two children hospitals.

Senior nurses who care for some of NSW’s sickest children last night told a meeting of medical staff at one of Sydney’s major children’s hospitals they had made to feel inferior to nurses at a rival hospital — throwing their support behind doctors pushing for a major overhaul of the way the two hospitals are run.

Doctors at the Sydney Children’s Hospital at Randwick, in the city’s east, last night voted overwhelmingly in favour of leaving the network that runs NSW’s two children hospitals, amid increasing anger that their concerns about a lack of cardiac services on their campus have not been addressed.

A document circulated to Randwick-based doctors, nurses and allied health professionals ahead of the meeting outlined “near-miss fatalities” involving sick children and newborn babies because of the lack of paediatric cardiac cover at Randwick.

Medical staff have raised concerns directly with NSW Health Minister Brad Hazzard for more than a year that the failure to provide proper cardiac services at their hospital will lead to deaths of critically ill children, and newborn babies delivered at the neighbouring Royal Hospital for Women.

At a 2½-hour meeting last night, 129 doctors voted to leave the network management structure that runs both the Randwick children’s hospital and the rival Children’s Hospital at Westmead, in the city’s west. Only 14 doctors voted to remain in the network and five abstained.

The meeting was also attended by about 50 nurses and allied health professionals, who shared their concerns about the management of the hospital but did not take part in the vote. It is understood the nurses were warned prior to the meeting they could face “consequences” if they attended.

An option favoured by many Randwick-based doctors is for the children’s hospital, the women’s hospital and the Prince of Wales Hospital, all on the same campus, to be run together, along with the neighbouring medical school at the University of NSW.

The Australian understands a senior nurse told the meeting that intensive care nurses, who had cared for critically ill children at Randwick for more than 20 years, had been made to feel like second-class citizens by network management, who favoured those at Westmead.

The vote will place further pressure on the Berejiklian government to resolve the bitter turf war between the two children’s hospitals over cardiac services.

Westmead doctors have ­argued that they should be the sole providers of paediatric cardiac surgery in NSW to achieve the best outcomes.

However, Randwick doctors say they require full-time cover by paediatric cardiac surgeons and cardiologists to ensure ­patient safety.

They say their services have been “wilfully under-utilised” while Westmead has been unable to cope with the burden placed on its paediatric cardiac services.

The head of the medical staff council at the Sydney Children’s Hospital at Randwick, cancer specialist Sue Russell, last night said the hospital cared for almost half the children in NSW requiring hospitalisation.

“In the interests of those children, 129 out of 148 senior specialist doctors voted to abandon the failed networking of the two children’s hospitals of Sydney,” she said.

“We have had no meaningful response from the Ministry of Health regarding the life-threatening risks posed to children that stem from losing cardiac surgery at our hospital.”

The Randwick-based doctors have no confidence a review of network governance, currently under way, will resolve their concerns.

A document circulated to medical, nursing and allied staff ahead of last night’s meeting outlined several “near-miss ­fatal­ities” at Randwick, including one case where a child with a serious heart condition waited 24 hours before receiving life-saving surgery because a Westmead-based cardiologist did not want the ­operation to occur at Randwick but there were no intensive care beds available at Westmead.