People urged to stay away unless it is an emergency
Returning now to the strain on Tasmania’s health system. Tasmanians are being urged to stay from the state's two biggest hospitals unless it's an emergency.
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TVTranscript
00:00 It's really tough times and unfortunately all our staff in our major hospitals have
00:06 been under considerable pressure over the last couple of years.
00:09 COVID of course hasn't helped.
00:11 A surge in influenza earlier in the year has put the pressure on.
00:15 Sadly, we've got a really substantial surge of baby boomers at the moment with a lot of
00:22 older people being sicker with more complicated problems and requiring more and more hospital
00:27 admissions.
00:29 So this call to stay away, that's come from the health department, so to be clear the
00:33 government.
00:34 What do the hospital staff and unions think of the situation that the hospitals now find
00:40 themselves in?
00:42 Sadly this is a 20 year problem.
00:45 We could have predicted that the baby boomers would be requiring more hospital services
00:49 as time progresses.
00:50 We always get surges during winter.
00:53 We knew this was going to happen and sadly we haven't prepared appropriately for it.
00:57 It's hard to put figures on it and you use all these adjectives to describe it but in
01:02 reality in a 24 bed emergency department in Hobart last night at 11pm we had 32 people
01:10 waiting for beds in the hospital.
01:11 We had patients who were admitted straight from the ambulances in the ramping being grabbed
01:16 outside going straight to hospital beds.
01:20 Sadly we are underprepared and understaffed and just not ready for this surge that's happening
01:26 at the moment.
01:27 It's often the cases that we hear that really hit home better than those numbers.
01:32 We're hearing of people with spinal injuries for example waiting hours for treatment.
01:36 Again our ambulances are blocked by being stuck in that ramping at the hospitals there.
01:43 Ramping four, five, six hours.
01:44 It's not uncommon and it's a terrible waste of resources and better planning, better organisation
01:51 and boosting our staff and boosting our resources is the only answer Gemma.
01:59 Speaking of staff, it has been said that a lot of staff are off sick at the moment.
02:03 Is that true and to what extent is that contributing to this acute situation that we're seeing?
02:08 It's certainly not helping.
02:10 We've had three years of COVID and whether we like it or not things are a lot better
02:14 but they're still not right.
02:15 We've had plenty of influenza this year as well and of course staff are burnt out.
02:21 70% of ED staff and ICU staff are measured as suffering from burnout.
02:29 These guys just don't have the resilience to tolerate the surge in pressure that's happening
02:34 down here at the moment.
02:35 We're just under prepared.
02:37 We're just not ready for what's going on at the moment.
02:40 Would you say that the issues are what other states are dealing with or are they localised?
02:45 They're certainly local at the moment for Tassie but other states we know are under
02:50 pressure as well.
02:53 It's not like a factory production line where you can dial up sick people or dial down sick
02:57 people.
02:58 Sadly we've just got to respond to community need.
03:01 That spinal case for example, accidents happen.
03:05 They're not predictable.
03:06 It's hard to know exactly what's going to happen in an ED department so we need that
03:10 extra capacity to cope with these surges but we don't have it at the moment.
03:15 And so do you think people should adhere to this advice to not turn up or do you think
03:19 they will?
03:20 I mean we know that some people shouldn't be presenting to emergency in the first place
03:24 but also for those who should be there can be flow on effects if they don't, right?
03:29 Yes, sadly we really need people to seek medical help and seek appropriate medical help.
03:36 It's one thing to say that was just a simple case of indigestion but occasionally indigestion
03:40 will be a cardiac arrest, a cardiac incident, a heart attack.
03:46 We just don't know with medicine.
03:48 It is a complicated, difficult area requiring considerable expertise.
03:55 It's fine to say that person shouldn't have presented after the event but we still need
04:01 people to turn up.
04:03 We don't want people to stay away if they're crook.
04:06 Telling people not to turn up, I mean it's not a long term solution.
04:08 What do you want to see from authorities now?
04:12 Well I could be here all day Gemma talking about that.
04:15 We need to boost the primary care.
04:17 We need to keep people out of hospitals.
04:19 We need to clear the log jam so we need appropriate funding to get people through the system.
04:24 We've got people stuck in Tassie and across Australia with just waiting for nursing homes,
04:30 waiting for NDIS support.
04:33 Simple acute beds are being held up by blocks in the system.
04:38 We need to clear the log jam.
04:39 We're only going to do it if we work on every facet of the health system.
04:44 Sadly Gemma it's not a quick fix.
04:46 We need to work on multiple areas.
04:48 Dr John Saul, head of the AMA Tasmania, thank you for speaking with us.
04:52 Thanks for raising these important issues Gemma.
04:55 Let's get roll up our sleeves and get to work on them.
04:57 [BLANK_AUDIO]