NO WAY TO TREAT MEDICS

THE Gold Coast’s public health system needs to treat the violence threatening the welfare of the workers in its wards.

For more than three years, this newspaper along with Mudgeeraba MP Ros Bates and sources within Queensland Health have highlighted the shocking injuries sustained by staffers. Nurses, doctors and paramedics have had their noses broken and needed surgeries for serious head injuries like “brain bleeds”.

Gold Coast Health listened and introduced several reforms including upgrading security at the Gold Coast University Hospital and Robina Hospital.

But the latest figures – they show double the increase in assaults since 2015 – reveal the violence is reaching a new level where staffers in some areas like the Emergency Department and mental health units accept that they will sustain a soft tissue injury on a weekly basis. Talk to the staffers and it is obvious that their own mental health is not in a good place. They believe they are not being cared fot.

“Mental health isn’t mental health any more. It’s drugs and alcohol (patients) in all the beds,” a hospital source said.

The city’s public hospital’s reached capacity late last month, creating a code yellow after a 10 per cent increase in demand for beds across the southeast.

Combine a packed ED, police dropping off rather than supervising ice addicts, the lack of search powers by security guards, and it becomes the norm that staff on their evening shifts prepare to become targets.

We know the security hot spots. The size of the Gold Coast University Hospital demands a police beat which can stamp out this violence.