AUSTRALIA'S MEDI-MESS

Four more recent reports below

Cash boost no health cure

ABOUT 4000 people on Queensland's elective surgery waiting lists will have their treatment fast-tracked by a Rudd Government cash injection. But it could be weeks before anyone determines who will benefit from the extra money, the first tranche in the delivery of Federal Labor's election campaign health pledges. Under the plan thrashed out between the federal and state governments in Brisbane yesterday, Queensland will receive the $27.6 million it asked for to help shift its backlog of 35,000 patients waiting for elective surgery.

State Health Minister Stephen Robertson said the first of the extra surgeries would begin within a month and include ear, nose and throat, neurological, ophthamological, orthopedic, urological and vascular procedures. But the Australian Medical Association cautioned there were 8600 people waiting longer than they should.

The funding to tackle Queensland's notoriously stubborn surgery waiting lists is part of $150 million offered by Treasurer Wayne Swan yesterday as a downpayment on the Rudd Government's four-year, $600 million health funding plan. It is also the fifth attempt since November 2005 to clear waiting lists by injecting extra funds into the public hospitals system.

But Federal Health Minister Nicola Roxon said "fruitful negotiations" yesterday provided new hope and she was "very confident, if today is any sign, that we will be able to work well for the benefit of all of the country"....

Queensland Treasurer Andrew Fraser said the funding would be used to target those patients waiting longer than clinically recommended for their elective surgery. The latest quarterly public hospitals performance report shows 35,061 patients sitting idle on elective surgery waiting lists.

AMA Queensland president Dr Ross Cartmill cautiously welcomed the announcement. "It is more expensive to treat people in the private sector, so fewer people will be able to be treated," Dr Cartmill said. "It is good news that there is the potential to treat around 4000 people but we should bear in mind we are still talking about a small number."

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Nurses offered cash to come back

No word about improving their absurdly overstretched working conditions

QUALIFIED nurses no longer working in the health system will be given financial incentives in a bid to lure them back to work, Prime Minister Kevin Rudd has said. The $87 million scheme aims to attract 7750 of the 30,000 nurses across Australia not currently working back to the profession within five years. Under the plan, cash bonuses of $6000 will be available to nurses who return to the health workforce after being out for more than a year. They will be paid an extra $3000 after six months back on the hospital ward and a further $3000 after 18 months. Hospitals will also receive a contribution of $1000 for each nurse to assist with retraining costs.

Mr Rudd outlined the scheme at Sydney's Royal Prince Alfred Hospital today, saying the move would go some way towards assisting the predicted shortfall of 19,000 nurses across Australia by 2010. "This will not be the end of our announcements on this matter but is a solid start in dealing with what is an impending shortfall in the overall supply of nurses," Mr Rudd said. He said the Federal Government would now write to state and territory governments and hospital representatives to outline the administrative arrangements for the plan. He said the government was committed to a similar scheme for nurses in residential aged care facilities.

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Pass all nurse trainees, teachers told

LECTURERS at a Brisbane nursing college were instructed to pass all of their students regardless of their performance. The investigation by the Queensland Nursing Council into Shafston College last year found that the college's Head of School of Nursing, Gay Carran, gave a directive to teachers that "no student should fail".

One witness, who was a senior nursing lecturer at Shafston from January 2004 to June 2006, told David Price, who undertook the investigation for the council, that students who had failed an occupational health and safety exam were allowed to re-sit the test two more times. She said in one re-sit exam, she and a colleague were told by Ms Carran to "mark students' work on the spot, immediately return unsatisfactory papers to students, and coach them until they obtained correct answers".

Ms Carran, who was also interviewed by Professor Price, denied she had given the directives but was reported as saying: "You always have to err on the side of ... let's be fair to the student. Ms Kemp (a Shafston nursing teacher) used to be black and white. If a student didn't pass, they were failed. We spoke to Ms Kemp about this as 'you can't do this because students are paying good money for the course'."

Five other former teaching staff at the college who were interviewed as part of the investigation supported the existence of the "no-fail" directive from the college management. Professor Price's investigation also found the college allowed some incompetent students with poor English to graduate with a nursing diploma last year, qualifying them to become enrolled nurses.

The college came under scrutiny after a graduate told a former Shafston lecturer she felt "unsafe" as an enrolled nurse at Brisbane's Prince Charles Hospital. Details of the investigation were submitted to the Queensland Supreme Court as part of the case brought by Shafston Nursing against the Queensland Nursing Council.

The council has not renewed the college's accreditation, which expired on December 31. The council has also placed restrictions on the activities of graduates from Shafston College. Shafston has since cancelled its nursing course, which was scheduled to begin in three weeks, and has suspended teaching for continuing students, some weeks away from graduating. About 500 students - of whom about half are from overseas - are being directed to a similar course offered by a South Australian private educator or to nursing programs at TAFE.

Professor Price's investigation was conducted in July last year and involved interviews with five former teaching staff, current senior staff and an inspection of the Shafston Nursing campus at Brisbane's Spring Hill. Students were charged up to $16,000 for the 55-week course. In its defence, Shafston claimed in documents submitted to the court that the witness statements were flawed because the former staff did not necessarily understand exam re-sit requirements. The college also rejected the idea it had allowed incompetent students or those with poor English skills to pass. The QNC has imposed strict restrictions on Shafston students who graduated in the last trimester of last year. Shafston and two of its graduates have separately taken the QNC to the Supreme Court in an attempt to have the restrictions lifted.

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Ambulance patients waiting too long in NSW

CRITICALLY ill patients are being forced to wait a combined 718 days a year on trolleys outside hospital emergency departments, figures from the NSW Ambulance Service show. The statistics, for P1 category patients such as road accident, stroke and stabbing victims, monitor the time those rushed to hospital by ambulance have to wait before being admitted. Across the state's public hospital one million minutes - or 718 days - were lost to the delays in 2006-07, News Ltd says. Gosford, Royal Prince Alfred, Wollongong, Royal North Shore and Liverpool Hospitals were the worst offenders.

Dr Sally McCarthy, vice-president of the Royal Australian College of Emergency Medicine, blamed the blockages on a lack of emergency beds. "This reveals the true problem about what is wrong with our health system and how the State Government is refusing to listen," she said. An unnamed ambulance officer said "people on death's door" were waiting for treatment.

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