Thursday, 24 February 2022

Albury Wodonga Health psychiatric services

Ms CROZIER (Southern Metropolitan) (17:36): (1777) My adjournment matter is for the attention of the Minister for Health, and it is regarding psychiatric services at Albury Wodonga Health. I have been informed by a number of very concerned practitioners or former practitioners about the lack of services for Albury Wodonga Health, and as one practising psychiatrist emailed me and said:

Over only a few years, the service has gone from a functioning service with dedicated staff to one in which many staff have left and those that are still there are demoralised and exhausted. This was happening well before COVID. Every local psychiatrist has left and many locums and international psychiatrists who have been brought in to fill the gaps have left … due to working conditions and difficulties with management.

The local member, Bill Tilley, has spoken to me on several occasions about this. He has been raising issues. He is very concerned about the services and what is happening in his community and what is occurring at Albury Wodonga Health. As the psychiatrist said, this has not happened through COVID. The bushfires ravaged that part of Victoria, as Ms Lovell knows only too well, through 2019. It was very demanding on some of these communities. These psychiatrists and these doctors and nurses who are committed to supporting their local community have been left high and dry. It is really serious, and it has gotten worse. These psychiatrists are saying that it is going from bad to worse where people are leaving, and as one also mentioned to me, Nolan House, the acute inpatient unit, has seen some horrendous issues arise, including where a serious incident happened in this facility—sadly, a suicide in April of last year. It is an area which needs urgent and major reform and rejuvenation. These staff are under pressure. They are leaving. They feel that they cannot speak out. They feel really as if there is nowhere to go. So many doctors have left, and they are leaving this community that has so many needs, not just from the bushfires of 2019 but also from COVID and the border closures. All of those incidents that were happening with the border closures have just been a tremendous burden on this community. So the action I seek is the minister’s immediate intervention into this crisis that is occurring at Albury Wodonga Health and that he ensure that there are appropriate and adequate psychiatric services that will service that community.