NO, NSWLHD: It’s the bureaucrats in the dock, not our medical team

The Beagle Editor, ‘NO, NSWLHD: It’s the bureaucrats in the dock, not our medical team’ The response from the SNSWLHD executive (below) to the resignations in the Moruya maternity team brilliantly demonstrates why these doctors are leaving. Just going back to Dr Holland’s testimony to the Inquiry into Access to Rural and Regional Health Services, he described how the maternity team in Moruya was performing miracles in clearly unacceptable working conditions. He later disclosed how the medical team was so concerned about the absence of neonatal care that they were considering closing the unit until the situation was resolved. Now instead of listening to the people on the ground, the health bureaucrats did what bureaucrats do: they engaged an external expert consultant and engineered the (damning) report to make it look as if the victims (the medical team) were in fact responsible for the situation. Are we surprised this was the final straw for the 2 doctors who resigned, with who knows how many more still to follow? We and all our local media should have a closer look at the SNSWLHD statement. For example: - It [the report] considered a range of factors including service capability, safety systems, clinical governance, leadership, culture and models of care. All of these are the responsibility of the health bureaucrats, they are the very reason for the existence of the health bureaucracy - SNSWLHD remains committed to the safety and care of women and their families. Very poor performance of the bureaucrats here, knowingly allowing the busiest maternity unit in the region to function without neonatal and paediatric services and therefore potentially endangering babies’ lives. And is it really safe and caring to force mothers to travel hundreds of kilometres by road to find medical care for themselves or their babies? - …the higher-level services that will be provided at the new Eurobodalla Regional Hospital. This new hospital will not have higher level maternity/neonatal services on

ribbon-cutting with the proposed number of maternity, neonatal and paediatrics

beds!

And they fool absolutely no one but themselves when they promise The resignations will

not result in any disruption to service delivery. Of course there will be disruption, e.g. no

local outpatient clinic and services running on fly-in-fly-out non-resident locums...

What sort of bubble are these people living in up in Queanbeyan and St Leonards?

And of course we can also look in amazement at the fact that despite their anguished

wringing of hands about the difficulty in recruiting medical specialists (you may wonder

why medical staff won’t come) they have miraculously already appointed a Senior

Obstetrician to fill the gap. This would not have taken just a week to arrange.

The tidal wave of public support and heartfelt valedictories for Dr Holland and his team

from the women and mothers of Eurobodalla and beyond eloquently illustrates that it is

the health bureaucrats who have everything to answer for, NOT the Moruya Maternity

and Neonatal unit. Fitzroy and Mylene Boulting, ONE New Eurobodalla L4 Hospital Advocates & Head Petitioners