28 February 2008

Angry PA Hospital staff to meet tomorrow over parking debacle
At least 1000 staff do not know where they will park from Monday

Angry nurses and other staff at the Princess Alexandra Hospital (PAH) will hold a mass meeting outside the hospital tomorrow (Friday, 29 February) to protest against inadequate parking space at the hospital.

PAH parking - mass meeting details

Date: Friday, 29 February 2008

Time: 12.00noon

Venue

Grassed area in front of Princess Alexandra Hospital

Ipswich Rd

Speakers include

QNU secretary, Gay Hawksworth, & other union officials

Queensland Nurses Union (QNU) secretary, Gay Hawksworth, said nurses and other staff are angry that the new hospital car park is inadequate for current and future needs. She said they are also angry about the way available car park spaces have been allocated.

“The new car park, to be managed by Metro Parking, opens on Monday (March 3) and it is clearly already too small for a facility of this size. There are only about 1100 spaces for staff in the new multi-storey facility and 300 spaces for patients and visitors. There is about another 300 spaces around the hospital grounds, which Metro will also manage from Monday. PAH has about 5000 staff. At least 1000 staff do not know where they will park from Monday,” Ms Hawksworth said.

“There was to be another floor, with 300 spaces, built on the new car park, but for some reason Queensland Health Capital Works will not approve its construction.

“Staff are also furious about the way Metro Parking has allocated the available spaces. The process has created enormous confusion and resentment. For example, people on annual leave when the process started have not been included in the allocation process.

“No consideration has been given to shift workers or other staff who work outside normal office hours. There was also no consideration for length of service. No real effort has been made to assist people who missed out on a place. And to add insult to injury, the private car park across the road has substantially increased its fees this week. I understand from $35.00 to around $70.00.

“Parking is already a major problem at PAH. Nurses report that surgery lists are sometimes delayed because staff have to park long distances from the hospital. Some patients do not turn up for essential treatments, including chemotherapy, because of difficulties finding a park.

“We predict there will be more problems like this and even nurse resignations unless this is fixed. At the very least the current alternative parking arrangements should be kept in place, including maintenance of the shuttle service from the Yeerongpilly and Mater Hospital car parks and maintenance of all Brisbane City Council long-stay (more than two hours) parking spaces on the streets around the hospital. These were due to cease in the next few weeks, because of the opening of the new on-site car park. 

“Queensland Health should also stop denying that car parking is part of its core business. You cannot run a hospital such as PAH if you do not provide sufficient, safe parking for staff, patients and visitors,” Ms Hawksworth said.

25 February 2008

New Bathurst Hospital - Nurses’ inspection identifies a long list of problems

NSW Nurses Association (NSWNA) officials conducted an occupational health and safety inspection of the new Bathurst Hospital late last week and identified a long list of problems, including the following:

• The Mental Health Unit is a very long way from being suitable for occupation and it appears the Methadone Unit should not be occupied for numerous reasons, including the fact there is easy access over the wall of the courtyard in the Mental Health Unit – leading to a three-storey drop. 
   
• The Paediatric Unit still has no safe way to contain the children and it also still has a storeroom, containing numerous hazardous solutions, with no door. 
   
• The Paediatric Unit also has easy access to the roof area (push button door release), which has a low-level wall and a three-storey drop. 
   
• Surgical Unit call bells cannot be heard once staff are more than 10 - 15 metres from the desk, as speakers are only located at the desk. 
   
• The Surgical Unit utilities room is extremely small and the hand-wash sink is behind the door - so people entering the room cannot see a person standing at the sink, which means staff are being struck by the door. This is a regular occurrence, because there is no other hand-wash sink in the ward and the utilities room sink is almost constantly in use. 
   
• The Maternity Unit Special Care Nursery remains open, as the desk in there has become the central midwives station – this also means the main entry door, which is a smoke door and meant to be closed, is propped open.  Staff advised that, as it is now the main desk area, the traffic flow is very high and recently a staff member exited the door and struck a mother and her baby trying to enter. So the lesser of two evils at the moment is to prop the door open. 
   
• The maternity assessment room doorway is too narrow and the trolley in that room does not fit through the door - so needless to say staff members are not using the room. During commissioning of the room the bed in that room was turned on its side to put it in place. 
   
• The secondary file storage is in the medical gases storage room - so in the event of a fire the thousands of files stored there will fuel the fire. 
   
• The duress alarms for the Mental Health Unit and Emergency Department do not identify their location, which means they are not the appropriate alarms for those areas. 
   
• Many staff have not had training around duress alarms or have been given the wrong instructions on how to activate the duress alarms. 
   
• It has now been confirmed that the Emergency Department and Intensive Care Unit both need structural changes. 

NSWNA assistant general secretary, Judith Kiejda, said there are also fairly heavy nursing workloads at the new Bathurst facility, with some nurses working more than 100 hours last fortnight.

“The NSWNA will write a full report on last week’s inspection at Bathurst and provide it to the Greater Western Area Health Service and Mr Ian Sinclair, who is investigating issues arising from the Bathurst Base redevelopment debacle.

“It is just unbelievable that a brand new facility can have so many occupational health and safety problems.

“Nurses expect that these issues, including the heavy workloads, will be addressed promptly and properly. We also expect that a lot more care will be taken with the Orange Base redevelopment and any other hospital redevelopment in the future.

“If the problems are not fixed then Bathurst nurses will meet in the next few weeks to consider what action to take to get them fixed,” Ms Kiejda said.