Tuesday, 10 May 2022

Royal Children’s Hospital

Ms CROZIER (Southern Metropolitan) (17:14): (1901) My adjournment matter this evening is for the attention of the Minister for Health, and it relates to the concerning news that was recently aired by the ABC regarding the Royal Children’s Hospital’s accreditation status. I think this is very concerning for every Victorian, especially those families who have got children at the Royal Children’s but also families into the future who will receive the care of the Royal Children’s Hospital. It is a magnificent hospital, it is an iconic hospital and it has been world renowned for many, many years. Of course we have just had the Good Friday Appeal, and the generosity of so many Victorians that gave to that appeal was tremendous.

So this was really concerning, what was raised in relation to the accreditation process around trainees in the paediatric emergency medicine area. Now, there are only four hospitals in Victoria that are accredited to train doctors in paediatric emergency medicine, and the Monash Medical Centre is the largest of those four and provides very good tertiary care and tertiary training. Only the day before yesterday there was an alert put out by the Royal Children’s Hospital to say:

Our Emergency Department (ED) is currently experiencing an incredibly high volume of patients, with our ED tracker currently showing as ‘Extremely Busy’.

We all know that the health system is in a mess in this state, and it is costing, sadly, Victorians’ lives. Because of the 000 crisis, ambulance ramping and an inability to get elective surgery, Victorians’ health conditions are worsening, not getting better.

I am concerned about the numbers of doctors that are in the system, the workforce shortage. There has been no planning. There has been no workforce strategy by the Andrews government, and one of these areas is this accreditation process that is really looking at a very particular type of trainee paediatrician. I would like to understand how many of the trainees who have signed contracts to work at the Royal Children’s Hospital this year are completing their training. What are the numbers, and will they all continue with that very important training that will set us up into the future to have those specialist paediatricians and specialist emergency medicine doctors on hand to treat sick Victorian children?