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Legislative Council - Fifty-Fourth Parliament, Second Session (54-2)
2020-12-03 Daily Xml
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Women's and Children's Hospital

The Hon. C. BONAROS (14:54): I seek leave to make a brief explanation before asking the Minister for Health and Wellbeing a question about the Women's and Children's Alliance and the Women's and Children's Hospital.

Leave granted.

The Hon. C. BONAROS: The Women's and Children's Alliance, expressly formed to campaign for improved funding and resources for the Women's and Children's Hospital, recently announced that it was being demobilised amid fears for the welfare of clinical staff exposing themselves to sanctions by management for daring to speak out over problems plaguing the hospital. Alliance members fear that hostility shown by hospital management and the board to its tireless efforts to expose genuine problems that threaten patient care has forced division amongst staff.

This was reinforced even further earlier this week when I met with a group of dedicated clinicians at the hospital, who told me that they have been accused by hospital management of casting a negative light on the Women's and Children's Hospital by speaking out against the hospital in unfavourable terms and that the management's focus appears to be on deflecting blame rather than addressing the concerns raised by these clinicians and staff in trying to address them.

Further, had it not been for the alliance and the hospital, they say that many of the issues that have now been raised in public, which are very much in the public's interest, would not have been raised at all. My questions to the minister are:

1. Are you concerned that the alliance, formed by such respected, eminent and highly skilled clinicians, has aborted its plans over its fears that clinicians and other senior staff are being threatened by the hospital's board and executive?

2. Do you agree with hospital management that doctors are casting a negative light on the hospital by publicly voicing concerns that they have, as a last resort, in relation to patient care?

The Hon. S.G. WADE (Minister for Health and Wellbeing) (14:56): Let me make two points. First of all, this government is very committed to community engagement. Reiterating the point I made earlier, that is one of the key reasons why we have moved to board governance. We also have huge respect for the men and women right across the state, 45,000 of them, who work within the SA Health network. We are keen to engage our workforce, both clinical and other workers, in shaping the services going forward.

Fundamentally, we want to make sure that these networks are healthy organisms, for want of a better word, that communicate well and resolve issues internally, but we are fully aware that from time to time issues of concern will escalate and become matters of public concern. So we respectfully engaged in the discussion with the alliance and with staff, which started late last year and went through this year.

As I previously advised the house, there were reviews done of services and additional employees added. Perhaps there was no greater project in that stream of activity than the work that was done to assess the viability of paediatric cardiac surgery. The alliance was very strongly backing a group of clinicians who believed that we could have a safe, high-quality paediatric cardiac surgery service in South Australia, and the board showed them the respect of giving their proposal a thorough review.

I believe that the board is continuing to engage its stakeholders seriously, both in the community and within their workforce, as demonstrated by the work done on the paediatric cardiac surgery service. The board has a responsibility to deliver high-quality and safe services, and the information provided to the board is that it wasn't possible to establish a local service at the current time.

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