President’s Word: In the wake of a tragedy

THE UNEXPECTED death of a patient is a tragedy for everyone involved. For the family, there is the heartbreak of loss. For the doctors, nurses and others involved in the patient’s care, they share that grief and terrible sadness for the family. Doctors and nurses are parents, sisters and brothers; they are neighbours and coaches; and they mourn those they cannot save, just as the rest of the community mourns.

This is especially the case when the tragedy involves a child. The recent death of a five-year-old boy who was discharged from Hornsby Ku-ring-gai Hospital and died less than 10 hours later was a shock to all those involved.

There is often wide media interest in these stories. In the face of such a tragedy, everyone wants to know the answer to the question ‘why’ to prevent something like this from ever occurring again. While I understand this interest, witch hunts, scaremongering and hysteria do not make our systems safer or better. The truth is, in the immediate aftermath of a tragedy, we often don’t know what has happened, and while everyone wants the answers as soon as possible, sometimes those answers take time. And in many instances, no one is at fault.

The process of finding those answers is critical to improving our system. We know that it is only through a careful and well managed process will we ever be able to identify the changes our system needs. We know this from the airline industry where this process has reduced airline disasters. It’s equally important for health. Clinical governance processes are extensive in our hospital system. All of us who work in the system spend a lot of time striving to improve the quality of care we provide to patients.

But we also know that hysteria and blame makes our system weaker. It undermines trust and it adds to the grief and distress. It distracts from the thousands of positive interactions our community has with the public hospital system every day. It is for this reason that I was again disappointed by the actions of Opposition Health Spokesperson Walt Secord for sensationalising the grief of the five-year-old’s family.

While the media decided not to identify the boy and the family’s identity without their permission, Mr Secord held up a photograph, identifying the boy and his parents by their first names during a hearing on State Health Budget estimates as he told Health Minister Brad Hazzard that a fundraising page had been set up to pay for the boy’s funeral. (The committee chairman gave instructions after the hearing that their names be redacted.)

This is not the first time we have seen such reckless behaviour. My members were equally distressed by heartless references to the tragic gas mix-up at Bankstown-Lidcombe Hospital that led to brain damage in the case of one baby and death in another.

My message to Mr Secord is that if you want to be Health Minister, you need the trust of doctors and we don’t trust people who don’t understand the system.

As doctors, we want to make our hospitals safer. This is why we fight for more resources. This is why we are so worried about the record, unrelenting increase in demand in our hospitals. Our hospitals are seeing more and more patients who are sicker than ever before. Doctors are burnt out and fearful about being able to manage. This is not the fault of the NSW Government. Instead, health reform seems to have stalled, leaving our hospitals the last resort of patients who should be receiving care elsewhere.

So, to my colleagues, we understand the burden of working at the coalface. And we understand that finger-pointing and blame-shifting does little to improve our system. As your professional association, we are here to support you and to speak in a constructive way about how we can make our system safer. This is what we all want for our families and our communities.

Finally, I’d like to wish all of our members a safe and happy festive season. We appreciate your continued membership and look forward to supporting you in the New Year.