of the people involved in this fiasco, believes that they are doing the right thing and that they are entitled to receive their fortnightly paycheck. Every Single One.
Tears, anguish over hospital of horrors.
ONE of the state's most senior intensive care doctors broke down as he gave evidence to a NSW parliamentary inquiry into Royal North Shore Hospital.
Another leading specialist yesterday described sections of the hospital as "Third World squalor".
Patients and relatives also recounted their horror stories of treatment at the hospital, including one woman with a burst appendix who waited more than eight hours for surgery and a quadriplegic who chewed through tubes so he could yell "help me" to his wife.
Jana Horska, who miscarried in a hospital toilet, and her husband, Mark Dreyer, wept as they gave evidence to the inquiry.
Mr Dreyer recounted the night in September when his 14-weeks-pregnant wife went to Royal North Shore with fears she was about to lose their baby. Ms Horska's miscarriage prompted the inquiry, which has taken evidence from more than 30 witnesses.
Mr Dreyer said that despite being in acute pain, Ms Horska was not seen by a doctor and was told just to sit and wait her turn.
When they asked for urgent treatment, staff made them feel like they were trying to "jump the queue".
Mr Dreyer told the inquiry that after Ms Horska miscarried in the toilets she had felt a heartbeat, saw legs move and the live foetus had appeared to open its mouth in an attempt to breathe.
A distraught Ms Horska said that shortly after, one nurse said to her: "Don't worry. My mother has had heaps of miscarriages."
"They were so cold, so cold towards me," Ms Horska said.
Malcolm Fisher, area director for intensive care and critical care, could not bring himself to finish reading a letter to the inquiry from a mother, whose teenage son died in the intensive care unit after a car accident.
An emotional Professor Fisher told the inquiry that he had "suitcases" of letters from relatives thanking staff for the treatment their relatives received despite them working in an ageing and poorly resourced hospital.
A colleague of his, the intensive care director Ray Raper, told the inquiry that he was embarrassed that he once defended the hospital's dilapidated condition, and after seeing other hospitals "the squalor of Royal North Shore is even more apparent".
"Royal North Shore Hospital has been very badly let down by the department," Dr Raper said.
The bed shortage was a "public planning disgrace".
Sydney's North Shore is one of the wealthiest places in Australia, multi-million dollar homes, BMW's to burn, the lot. Living in those homes are the people who define the policies that guide Australia's development and then are paid serious money to implement them.
And to fix this problem they will no doubt prescribe even more of the cost cutting, outsourced, privatised managerialist, "businesslike" approach that has put them in this hole in the first place. Because the only alternative is to raise taxes and adopt a public good mindset that makes them vomit.
And if it were not for the fact that it kills the innocent, I'd be happy for them stew in their own juice. To ask my perennial question, what the hell would it take to convince these people that their experiment has failed?
Lysenko smiles from beyond the grave, his ignorance and pig headedness are alive and well.
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