Adjournment
Elective surgery
Wayne FARNHAM (Narracan) (19:00): (321) My adjournment this evening is for the Minister for Health, and the action I seek from the minister is to address the crisis that is our hospital waitlist for urgent care. This week I met with Shane Adamiak, who has long suffered with debilitating pain in his knee, which has led to a drastic decline in his quality of life. I have known Shane Adamiak for a very long time, and like most men of my age, we tend to ignore problems or we tend to think it will be okay. When Shane was asked three years ago what the pain level was, he said, ‘Oh, she’ll be right, it’s about a six.’ That is a typical response from someone my age. Unfortunately, though, his knee surgery has been delayed three times. Some of the reasons for the delay were that (1) a doctor was on holiday; (2) – the second reason – was that there was a worldwide shortage of knee parts, which was interesting; and I am not quite sure of what the third reason was. Unfortunately Shane now is living in extreme pain. He struggles to walk across the road. A little bit similar to the member for Gippsland East’s contribution last sitting week, what was probably more distressing for Shane was that after his third cancellation he got a text from the Austin Hospital – and you could not write this even if you tried – that actually said ‘We hope your surgery went well and you are comfortable’. Well, it was a little bit embarrassing for the Austin, because they did not actually operate on his knee, and Shane was quite distressed. What I am asking is that the minister address the issue of the elective surgery list and put that as a priority. I would be happy to pass on Shane’s details to the minister to maybe try and resolve his issue, because his quality of life now is not very good.