JOHN Hunter Hospital's staff and services are "stretched to the max", but plans to redevelop the site are the beginning of a "very exciting journey," Dr Stephen Oakley says. The co-chair of the John Hunter's Medical Staff Council said the existing hospital was not currently fit for purpose, and an expansion was "long overdue".
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Dr Oakley said the lack of private spaces for clinical handovers and "distressed families" were a legacy of the rushed occupancy of the hospital following damage to the Royal Newcastle in the 1989 earthquake.
"We know about the terrible shortage of intensive care beds, and the desperate need to expand the emergency department," he said. "The John Hunter Hospital serves a much larger area than just Newcastle and the Hunter. We serve all the way up to the Queensland border, and take patients from the north coast too. So all of the services are stretched to the max, and the staff are stressed - they have been for a long time."
He said the Medical Staff Council would be pushing for more non-clinical spaces to be included in expansion plans, as well as more on-site accommodation.
"There is a need to accommodate the distressed families we frequently encounter in corridors outside the critical care unit," he said. "And for the families that have often traveled so far, I think we could do more for them in terms of overnight accommodation. We also need to make sure there is more overnight accommodation for on-call staff - doctors who come in for midnight procedures need somewhere to crash for a few hours before they start their next shift.
"And we need places where we can conduct our clinical handover when we change shifts. We need to be able to sit down somewhere quietly to discreetly go over what are often sensitive case details. At the moment it is largely happening in corridors, and occasionally in coffee areas."
Dr Oakley said informal spaces where staff could debrief and de-stress would promote a collegiate, supportive, medical fraternity.
"It's important we consider the health and well-being of our staff, particularly with the ongoing issues of stress and, occasionally, suicides. We see our junior doctors in distress, and try to mentor them, but I think we need to be doing more to support them. At present, we are failing. There are a lot of great formal programs, but I don't think they are enough."
But Dr Oakley said the link road to the Inner City Bypass extension "simply must" happen before any construction began at the hospital.
"I am concerned that it could cause quite major delays," he said. "It is the single greatest barrier to the redevelopment, and must be resolved as a matter of urgency."
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