Another disaster waiting to happen at Launceston General Hospital, staffer says

A disaster of James Geoffrey Griffin proportions is waiting to happen again at Launceston General Hospital, a whistleblower employee claims >>

A DISASTER of James Geoffrey Griffin proportions is waiting to happen again at Launceston General Hospital, an anonymous employee claims.

The employee says almost nothing has changed at the hospital since last year’s child sexual abuse commission of inquiry hearings, with the same mistakes being made.

She said some of the senior staff who’d admitted before the inquiry to “catastrophic” failings by the institution in dealing with the case of Griffin – a prolific paedophile nurse who worked on the children’s ward for 18 years – were still in senior roles.

The staffer, who asked to remain anonymous in order to protect her job, said morale was so low at the LGH, and the organisation so poorly run, that a lot of the experienced staff had left.

In their place, she said, the LGH had hired “a lot of very junior staff”.

“There’s a lot of whitewashing with the storytelling they’re doing – that the community is really happy and that there’s a lot of trust at the LGH,” the employee said.

“The new staff don’t know any different.”

She said the ongoing lack of accountability was creating the perfect storm for another massive disaster.

“If you do the same thing, you’re going to get the same result,” she said.

Launceston General Hospital. Picture: Amber Wilson

In September last year, following the eight weeks of public hearings, Premier Jeremy Rockliff announced the government was “taking strong action” to improve child safety, with reviews into child safe government and the LGH’s human resources – and how it handled instances of serious misconduct.

Mr Rockliff also said the LGH needed a “renewal” and a restructure of the hospital’s senior executive, with an active recruitment process for new leaders, plus the impending retirements of executive director of medical services, Peter Renshaw, and executive director of nursing and midwifery, Helen Bryan.

Dr Renshaw was criticised during the inquiry for showing an “astonishing lack of insight” and causing further grief to the family of the late Zoe Duncan, who was raped by an LGH doctor when she was 11 years old.

Peter Renshaw, the executive director of medical services at Launceston General Hospital, has retired since giving evidence to Tasmania's child sexual abuse commission of inquiry.

Ms Bryan apologised before the inquiry and said she felt “really very sad” that she didn’t “properly fulfil my responsibilities” after it was discovered a paedophile had been working on the children’s ward for nearly two decades.

But the worker expressed concern about who would replace Dr Renshaw and Ms Bryan, saying no new senior leaders had been recruited from outside LGH.

Her concerns echoed those of LGH nurse and midwife Amanda Duncan, who said several staff who admitted to making serious errors over the handling of Griffin had simply been “shuffled” on to other jobs.

She said the institution needed a new approach by management.

“The fact that a paedophile was able to be at the LGH is one thing, but that it wasn’t addressed is the breach in confidence that has occurred,” the anonymous employee said.

“The same people are running the same (system). We’ve got the same executive structure even though we’re supposed to have new people.

“It’s the same, it’s the old guard. They’re just shuffling the deck chairs.”

The employee said while there was now a much clearer focus on child safe principles at the LGH, there was still not a “timely reaction” to any kind of workplace behavioural breach.

The repeated ignoring of Griffin’s “boundary breaches” by his superiors was a key theme at the commission of inquiry.

The worker said staff were hoping for new management, recruited from interstate and intrastate, but “that hasn’t happened”.

“It’s just a holding pattern until no-one’s looking,” she said.

The worker said maintaining the hospital’s executive structure was re-traumatising for the people who’d been sexually abused as children at the LGH, as well as the staff who’d lived through it.

“You can’t move forward until you’ve addressed what’s happened. How is the organisation, how is the staff, the patients, to move forward if the same implicated people are still making really important decisions about the hospital?” she said.

“It’s really horrifying. It’s very hard to work in.”

But Department of Health secretary Kathrine Morgan-Wicks said things were changing at the LGH, and new external staff were actively being recruited.

She said interstate woman Jennifer Duncan had been appointed to the newly-created role of chief executive for the northern region, in a role “directly responsible for child safeguarding at the LGH” – after initially working at the hospital as director of operations.

“She is highly qualified and previously held a senior position with the Hunter New England Local Health District in NSW,” Ms Morgan-Wicks said.

She also said a “national search” had been undertaken to replace Dr Renshaw, with an appointment to be announced shortly.

Likewise, she said a national search was underway to replace Ms Bryan, with the position advertised last month.

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