No doctor was available to fill the roster at the emergency department at Inverell Hospital last weekend.
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A casual locum could not work at short notice.
Inverell resident Brad Hilton, who went there having sliced his foot, faced the prospect of going to Armidale to be treated.
He said it was ridiculous that a town the size of Inverell didn’t have enough staff to man the hospital on the weekend.
“You’ve got management, doctors and nurses and when you’re hearing two out of three say there is a problem, something has got to be done,’ Mr Hilton said.
“I can’t be critical of the doctors, there’s several of them up there now (Monday) and I can’t be critical of them, they need to have a life too but what if they’re spending $30m on the hospital and it’s still not going to fix the problem.’’
“There are fundamental operating issues – fix them first,” he said.
Mr Hilton said there were obviously issues when staff were mentioning them to the public, and explaining why he had to go to Armidale.
As it turned out, a visiting obstetrician who had come to the hospital to check on a patient, was roped into stitching Mr Hilton’s foot.
“The possibility that I had to go to Armidale to get stitches in my foot is ludicrous,’’ he said.
“I have an elderly mother and three boys. If something more urgent happened, are people going to be there when you need them?
“Management needs a little bit of redirection. they need to listen to their staff.
“If it takes the community to say this is crazy, well, so be it. They need support. We don’t want to lose doctors and they can’t be on call all the time.
“The poor nurses were run off their feet and they were awesome.”
New England Health rural and regional executive director Susan Heyman said a casual locum advised the hospital at short notice that he was unable to work 8am to 2pm on both Saturday and Sunday.
“Recruiting appropriately skilled doctors to rural areas is a challenge that we, like other health services right across the country, continue to experience,’’ she said.
“We are currently advertising for additional doctors in our emergency department and GP clinic.’’
She said Inverell Hospital always had immediate access to senior medical officers who could provide assistance and instruction to nurses via Telehealth and video-link.
If a patient required urgent attention, they would be taken by ambulance to Armidale or Tamworth.