Only days ago, the West Australian state government was bragging that it had “the best budget performance in the world through the pandemic”. Leaving aside the dubious morality of making billions from a genocidal communist dictatorship, West Australians might be excused for asking why, if their government really is such a stellar manager, their hospitals are in such dire straits.
A breastfeeding mother forced to spend an excruciating 13 hours in a wheelchair in a Perth emegency department, with a 25-centimetre blood clot in her thigh, was so shocked by how busy the staff were she used a zimmerframe to go to a woman calling for help from her hospital bed […]
These are just two of the thousands of stories behind Perth’s spiralling ambulance ramping figures and related hospital understaffing, which experts say is both endangering lives and reflecting a system completely unready for a COVID-19 outbreak.
WA Today
Which might explain premier Mark McGowan’s dogged recalcitrance in steadfastly refusing to open WA’s borders – except for select mining billionaires, of course.
Like “Dictator Dan” in Victoria, McGowan has moved to make sure that he can rule almost without any democratic accountability. Except for those pesky elections. So, like the Stockholm-syndromed inmates of Victoria, McGowan has kept sandgropers in a state of perpetual COVID-panic. As a result, McGowan seems almost certain to sweep back into power next month.
No matter how appalling its hospital system has become.
Nurses at Perth’s major hospitals say they are working in “survival mode”, operating with shortfalls of 30 to 50 fewer staff than required.
And emergency department doctors have backed the claims, saying staffing ratios accepted in major emergency departments were “outrageous” and would never be accepted in hospital wards.
Nurses say patient safety is at risk, with the shortages most severe in critical care and specialty areas at King Edward Memorial Hospital, Perth Children’s Hospital and major emergency departments.
Australian Nursing Federation state secretary Mark Olson said nurses were “actively discouraged from calling codes” that would alert hospital management and government authorities to dangerous staff shortages.
Some nurses believed this was to hide the extent of the problem, while others working in hospitals believed calling the codes was useless anyway because doing so wouldn’t fix any issues.
No small part of the problem in fact results from the government’s COVID panic. From the very start of the lockdown mania, there were warnings that suspending normal public health procedures would result in a wave of serious illnesses and even deaths in the longer term. Having practically shut down its hospitals, like so many other states, WA is now in desperate catch-up mode – and its hospital system simply cannot cope.
[Olson] said after the COVID-19 shutdown, the government announced hospitals would catch up on elective surgery, but this was being pushed too hard.
“They should have said we can’t catch up as quickly as you would like,” he said[…]
“People are going to die if they keep this up.”
Needless to say, McGowan is fast with the excuses.
Premier Mark McGowan said “we’re doing a lot of things to try and deal with the situation” when pressed on ambulance ramping figures and bed block.
He said enhanced cleaning of hospitals was impacting on waiting times[…]
Australian Medical Association WA president Andrew Miller said blaming cleaning and more mental health patients was “just lies now”[…]
“The Premier has given all sorts of reasons our emergency departments are such a mess, from mental health admissions to COVID-19 cleaning,” Dr Miller said.
“But none of them wash and all those issues are furphies according to the frontline staff.
“There’s only one way to fix this mess and that’s to open more hospital beds.
WA Today
Which ought to be a doddle for the “best budget in the world” state.
Unless, of course, the truth is that McGowan is a mediocre public manager who’s just been lucky enough to be bankrolled by China.
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