Rockhampton Hospital: the Health Service has responded

What we have done since your survey

• 22 September. Letter to the Health Service Chief Executive, Board Chair, Director-General, Health Minister and Health Ombudsman, setting out your survey results in full. Read our letter
• 22 September. Work health and safety concern lodged with Workplace Health and Safety Queensland.
• 6 October. The Office of the Health Ombudsman accepted a health service complaint. We have since asked them to consider a systemic investigation.
• October. Right to Information application for the 2016 independent review, which has never been released, and for workload concern and RiskMan records. Acknowledged and in progress.
• 15 October. Follow-up to the Chief Executive, after no response to our letter.
• 16 October. A brief to the Board Chair, asking the Board to require a response and to test the assurances it has been given.
• 20 October. Letter about staff being asked to leave the Maternity Services Workload Concern meeting on 8 October because they are not QNMU members. Read our letter

The response

On 20 October the Health Service Chief Executive replied. Her letter is linked below. Please read it yourself rather than take our summary for it.

She says the Health Service is reviewing staffing and skill mix across the Special Care Nursery, Birthing Suite and Maternity Unit with attention to neonatal competency and escalation, progressing recruitment, reviewing the Business Planning Framework and establishment, reviewing workload escalation and RiskMan processes, looking at staff wellbeing and psychosocial safety, and measuring all of it against previous reviews.

She says a number of the matters we reported require verification and that the Health Service does not propose to prejudge that work, but that where immediate risks are identified, controls will be put in place without waiting.

It is a response, and that is more than we had a week ago. What it does not contain is a single date, number or specific commitment.

Two questions for you

1. What is actually happening on your ward?

The letter describes reviews. You are the people who would notice whether anything has changed on the floor. Tell us what you are seeing on your shifts, good or bad. If things have improved, we want to know that too.

2. Would you like us to try and arrange a meeting?

The Chief Executive’s letter says that if our members wish to engage further, the Health Service “would welcome connections and conversations”. We are willing to take her up on that and ask for a meeting with the executive, open to our members and to any colleague who wants to come, whichever organisation they belong to or none. Say the word and we will ask.

You are welcome to share this with your colleagues.

Contact us from a personal email address rather than your work email: hotline@npaq.com.au or 1300 263 374.

Photo: RegionalQueenslander, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.