NO PLACE FOR MEAL MISERS

SHOOT the messenger, threaten staff with the sack — it seems the old tried and tested ways are still in vogue at Queensland Health.

Nurses at Gold Coast University and Robina hospitals have been told they will lose their jobs if they talk to the Bulletin about an appalling state of affairs in which a rations crackdown by health fat cats left patients going hungry.

Staff were warned not to go to the media yesterday – after the Bulletin had published its report of hot meals being dumped for sandwiches in the short-stay and clinical decisions units, and of staff dipping into their own wallets to buy food for patients when the kitchen said the sandwich quota was already filled.

Instead, staff were told problems were to be conveyed to management – which is exactly what nurses had been trying to do for weeks, as reported yesterday in the Bulletin, but no one was listening so nurses came to us in desperation.

Following the reading of the riot act to staff yesterday, one hospital worker ignored the threats by bureaucracy and contacted us again, saying staff had detected no change in the sandwich policy during the morning despite assurances by Gold Coast Health to the Bulletin on Wednesday night that there had been “immediate steps to reverse’’ the no-frills kitchen edict. However Gold Coast Health advised later in the day that patients last night were given the option of hot or cold meals.

Queensland Health has form on the Gold Coast for taking a heavy handed approach. The Bulletin has been targeted many times for its reporting of problems involving security issues, for example, and drug use in which ice addicts were sneaking out of wards to score drugs in the streets.

Bureaucrats in 2013 sacked a director of surgery, who had previously been flown to Darwin by former premier Peter Beattie to operate on victims after the 2005 Bali bombings, for speaking out about a “life and death’’ acute bed shortage and a “culture of fear and intimidation’’.

Bureaucrats would better serve the people who pay their wages – the public – if instead of seemingly trying to maintain that “culture of fear’’ in dealing with health professionals in the wards, they did all they could to boost health services and support staff to the hilt, thus providing better outcomes for patients.

Nurses are already having to pay ridiculous amounts to a private operator for parking because it is too dangerous for them to leave their cars kilometres away when they work nights.

Now, when calls to the kitchen have been turned down because someone has decided the ward has used its quota of sandwiches, nurses have had to pay to feed hungry patients out of their own pocket, as well as save the patients’ lives and patch them up.

Is this what we have come to? Governments and bureaucracies so mean spirited that they have forgotten their humanity?

This episode does not reflect well on Gold Coast Health and the Queensland Government. Thank heavens there are still good people in the wards who have retained the spark of compassion.