Speaker 1: Ten past four nurses midwives have rallied outside Westmead Hospital
Speaker 1: today following revelations that the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit inside
Speaker 1: Westmead simply does not have enough resources. The NICU is
Speaker 1: funded for forty four beds now. The Neonatal Intensive Care
Speaker 1: Unit is the unit inside Westmead that looks after the
Speaker 1: sickest of babies, babies who are premature, babies that need
Speaker 1: the most help, and it is forty four beds in size,
Speaker 1: but on a regular basis, the staff, the nurses there
Speaker 1: and the doctors they need to open it up to
Speaker 1: as much as fifty beds. So what they describe this
Speaker 1: is they have to double park the babies, triple park.
Speaker 1: And it's been suggested today that there are babies being
Speaker 1: treated in the corridors of the hospital. There are babies
Speaker 1: being treated in storerooms. Now I've spoken with the government
Speaker 1: today and they say that they're not being treated in storerooms.
Speaker 1: And the Minister Ryan Park will go to Westmead Hospital
Speaker 1: this week once the budget's handed down and he will
Speaker 1: meet with some of the nurses and he will meet
Speaker 1: with the management. Jessica Charleston is a midwife at Westmead
Speaker 1: Hospital and she's one of the midwives who's concerned. Thank
Speaker 1: you for joining me, Jessica, Thank you for having me.
Speaker 1: Tell me about your experience of treating babies in this unit.
Speaker 2: So, first of all, I just want to highlight that
Speaker 2: we are talking about the neonatal intensive care unit within
Speaker 2: the adult hospital. Yep, we are not part of the
Speaker 2: Kids Hospital, We are not part of the Children's hospital network.
Speaker 2: We are part of Western.
Speaker 1: This is the Westmeads standard hospital. But you're talking neonatal care,
Speaker 1: so babies who are the most neat.
Speaker 2: Baby within the adult hospital. So there's been some confusion
Speaker 2: about which unit has been referred to.
Speaker 1: And yeah, so this is the neonatal intensive care unit
Speaker 1: within Westmead. So tell me about your experience.
Speaker 2: It's pretty scary sometimes walking in and sort of not
Speaker 2: knowing what you're going to do, what you're going to
Speaker 2: get for the day, walking into a bedspot and go it. Oh,
Speaker 2: there's some extra babies in here that they're meant to
Speaker 2: be plush. I've got an extra allocated extra babies than
Speaker 2: what I should be. This is a really sick baby
Speaker 2: and I've got to manage that really sick baby as
Speaker 2: well as another one, maybe two babies.
Speaker 1: Is there an issue of its physical resources having the
Speaker 1: physical space there or is it a staffing problem.
Speaker 2: It's both, it's both. We have physically run out of
Speaker 2: space in the unit that we have. We have forty
Speaker 2: four physical bedspots in the unit, and it's not unus
Speaker 2: for us to have fifty babies and with times going
Speaker 2: even higher than that. Our funding is currently to have
Speaker 2: twenty one staff on a shift and over the last
Speaker 2: probably four to six months, we're needing twenty four to
Speaker 2: twenty six. So is staff needing to do extras and
Speaker 2: over time to try and meet that demand. I mean
Speaker 2: we rarely get there. That's staff trying and to do
Speaker 2: as much as they can.
Speaker 1: There was a headline this morning about babies being treated
Speaker 1: in the corridor. Baby's being treated in it in a storeroom.
Speaker 1: Now the government's told me, no, they're not being treated
Speaker 1: in the storeroom. From your experience, is that true?
Speaker 2: It's true. We have what we call what has always
Speaker 2: been known as our resource room, which started life as
Speaker 2: a storeroom where we kept our resuscatees that we used
Speaker 2: to treat critically unwell babies and was where we then
Speaker 2: were able to restock those resuscites and after there was
Speaker 2: an article in twenty eighteen. I believed after that the
Speaker 2: shelves from the storeroom were removed, but it's still the
Speaker 2: storeroom that we can have up to sort of two
Speaker 2: or three babies in.
Speaker 1: Ryan part the health Minister. He's going to come out
Speaker 1: and see you guys later this week. What do you
Speaker 1: want to say to the health ministuff if you personally
Speaker 1: get the chance to meet with him, what do you
Speaker 1: want to say to Ryan Park.
Speaker 2: I don't necessarily want to say anything. I just we
Speaker 2: would love the opportunity to show him what we're talking about. Yep,
Speaker 2: it's anyone like, it's very obvious what the issues are.
Speaker 2: We can show him how our daily staffing sheet that
Speaker 2: sort of shows how many shorts we are on a
Speaker 2: shift regularly, and we can show him baby's hammed into
Speaker 2: what is obviously one bed spot, having sort of two
Speaker 2: babies side by side. We can show him this store
Speaker 2: room that we put babies in. We might even have
Speaker 2: an admission that sits out in the corridor while we
Speaker 2: try and move other babies to make room for this
Speaker 2: sort of unexpected admission that we often get.
Speaker 1: Well, he's going to come later in the week and
Speaker 1: hopefully you can show him the exact reality of the situation.
Speaker 1: Thank you for your tom. Jessica, thank you very much.
Speaker 1: Jessica Charleston, who's a Union midwife, so she's met representative
Speaker 1: of the union, but she works here on the job.
Speaker 1: So it's the neonatal intensive key in it within Westmeat.
Speaker 1: So it has funding for forty four beds, but often
Speaker 1: they have to treat fifty babies at one time, and
Speaker 1: these are really sick babies, often born premature. These are
Speaker 1: the babies who need the most health. Chris Min's the Premier,
Speaker 1: has responded to this today.
Speaker 3: Some of the good signs that we're seeing is retention
Speaker 3: across the network is now where we were at prior
Speaker 3: to the COVID emergency. We are saving over ninety percent
Speaker 3: of people year or year from retiring or resigning from
Speaker 3: the public health system.
Speaker 1: So Chris Minn says the issue is mostly about staffing,
Speaker 1: and Jessica says, yes, it's staffing as well, not just
Speaker 1: the physical layout of the hospital and the resources there.
Speaker 1: And the Premier's argument is they're now preventing nurses from resigning.
Speaker 1: Don't forget the Nurses and Midwives Association is still locked
Speaker 1: in the pay battle as well with the state government
Speaker 1: and that's not resolved yet. That's before the Industrial Relations
Speaker 1: Commission and nurses are paid roughly seventeen percent more in Queensland.