Christmas COVID Pushes Badly Needed Surgery Wait Lists Even Further Out

Queensland Health bureaucrats have responded to our emergency departments filling with COVID this month by planning to call back many nurses over the Christmas/New Year period and stopping elective surgery yet again.

There are many Queenslanders waiting on what are now ultra long waitlists for elective surgery which will now most likely take years.  On behalf of nurses, we extend our sympathy to these people and their families for their pain and suffering.

The likely closure of elective surgery for Christmas/New Year will make it a painful, lonely time for many Queenslanders who have waited for years for life improving surgery.  

Queensland Health bureaucrats have no answers and are causing unnecessary harm and stress for so many Queenslanders.

NPAQ has the solutions; Queensland’s health system needs locally elected community boards with skilled, elected nurses on the boards driving reform across the state, aligned with local needs to deliver local, accountable healthcare.

The Director-General of Queensland Health knows the system is broken.  He and the bureaucrats must act now by cutting the politics and the mismanagement and by allowing our local communities to run the hospitals. 

Queenslanders deserve quality and safe healthcare. Queensland Health deserves competent, capable, nurse-led hospital management, supported by locally elected independent Boards.  

Boards that are informed by health professionals and free to focus on local health needs and solutions, enabled by a budget to deliver the healthcare Queenslanders need where they live.

Margaret Gilbert

NPAQ President