Doctors at Adelaide’s Flinders Medical centre and their union claim workplace laws were broken during a hot long weekend when patients were being treated in corridors. The union claims the hospital's administrators declared a 'code yellow' without consulting doctors. The administrators say the practice won't be used again and insist the emergency department is safe.
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00:00 It's home to South Australia's second biggest emergency department.
00:06 But despite expansions and upgrades, concern remains about the Flinders ED's ability
00:11 to cope with patient demand.
00:13 Putting beds in corridors is not going to assist the clinicians.
00:18 On March 13, management declared a code yellow, or internal emergency at the hospital due
00:23 to a surge in presentations.
00:25 Doctors called their union to the ED nearly a fortnight later for a safety inspection,
00:30 with the code yellow still in place.
00:32 A report to SafeWork SA obtained by ABC News shows beds and treatment spaces like this
00:38 had been set up in ED corridors.
00:41 The doctor's union says it was done without consultation and its members thought the beds
00:45 were clinically unsafe.
00:47 Certainly there was a view that the primary care and responsibility were being advised
00:54 and authorised by the administration rather than by the doctors themselves.
00:59 We quickly, very quickly heard our staff concerns and actually stood down corridor care and
01:04 we will not be using corridor care again.
01:07 The inspection report includes quotes from staff.
01:10 One doctor described the emergency department at the time as inherently unsafe, even with
01:15 it being designed so all of the current problems did not happen.
01:19 Ramping and the access block from the emergency department into the hospital has considerably
01:25 worsened.
01:26 Corridor care was one of the alleged breaches of SA's Work Safety Act, which also included
01:31 the inappropriate use of the code yellow, a lack of support for trainee medical workers
01:36 and insufficient staff for the roster.
01:39 The emergency department at Flinders has had a difficult 12 months in terms of our medical
01:43 staffing.
01:44 I think that's probably a national and international experience.
01:48 I don't think we're unique in having had that problem.
01:50 Since the code yellow here at Flinders back in March, 20 new hospital beds have opened
01:55 to help ease pressure on the emergency department.
01:58 It's part of the state government's plan to add 280 beds to the health system by the end
02:03 of 2025.
02:04 [BLANK_AUDIO]