Hospital loses ICU accreditation
A major Sydney hospital has lost its Intensive Care Unit training accreditation following a string of serious bullying and harassment allegations.
The College of Intensive Care has stripped Sydney’s Westmead Hospital of its ICU training credentials in September following the complaints against senior medical staff.
The NSW Government has demanded a report into the allegations within a month.
The Western Sydney Local Health District has been appointed independent investigator, and should be able to reveal the extent and nature of the allegations, which have not yet been made public.
Fairfax Media reports say the Australian Salaried Medical Officer's Federation NSW (ASMOF) has emailed its members to decry the “serious failings and the erosion of trust and confidence in management from the district to effectively and appropriately deal with such conduct”.
It said losing training positions could impact patient care and increase workloads for existing ICU doctors.
Westmead Hospital senior clinician Mark Priestly has refuted those claims.
“It's probably worth notifying that there was no suggestion by the intensive care unit of any problem with the quality of the patient care, in fact the care in the intensive care unit is excellent,” Dr Priestly said.
But he said the allegations “concerned them greatly”.
“We're taking it very seriously and looking to address the issues identified, and [in particular] the culture of bullying,” Dr Priestly said.
“I think that there are a lot of issues around a supportive working conditions and supportive nature from senior to junior staff that can be addressed.
“And we can take examples both within the hospital that are working well and outside and looked to using them as exemplars to make that work in different units and also from hospital to hospital but there's a lot of work we can do.”