Legislative Council, Thursday 31 May 2023

Ms FORREST (Murchison) - Mr President, some days I feel like I am bashing my head against the wall and I just want to scream. The mild frustration pales into insignificance when it comes to my constituents in Circular Head.

I wish to raise a matter of great concern to me in my electorate and, sadly, one I have raised previously. Here we are again, saying the same thing. It is deeply concerning for me and the community of Circular Head. I am referring to ambulance services. I want to refer to these briefly, including the comments made to me on this issue.

I have asked questions in the past couple of years about ambulance services in Circular Head. I would like to refer very briefly to the answers provided to two questions in August 2021 around unfilled positions. The Leader said:

Prior to the roles being advertised in July -

This is in 2021.

Shifts were covered by staff and the branch station officer relief register and interviews occurred on 13 August 2021 and two applicants have been appointed on a temporary basis while permanent recruitment processes are undertaken.

That was one answer. Another one related to a similar matter, response times to Circular Head for ambulances. This is for Priority 1 life-threatening cases and they had varied from 44 to 25 minutes over the period of 2016-17 to 2021 with medium response times around 21 to 22 minutes. That is what it was like back then.

Members may also recall me raising the issue of a constituent, Mr Scott Tuffnell, who was seeking care for serious pain at Smithton Hospital. I spoke on adjournment about Tuffnell's situation and how the Smithton Hospital had called for an ambulance. There were no ambulances to take him. He was advised that his wife should drive him through to Burnie Hospital and to stop on the way and call an ambulance if it got unbearable. It did at Rocky Cape. They rang and still no ambulances were available so his wife had to continue driving in extraordinarily difficult circumstances.

The Leader responded the next day after my second contribution on this matter and she said:

In relation to the matter that the member for Murchison raised last night -

The night before on adjournment.

I want to assure the member and the community that the Tasmanian Government is committing to expanding and adding resources to stations and areas to continue providing the right care at the right place at the right time. Smithton ambulance station currently employs two paramedic branch station officers, who work as a single officer in rotation involving day shifts and being on-call overnight to provide care for the Circular Head community.

I am advised there is currently a part-time position vacant at the Smithton ambulance station and this has been actively recruited to. I want to assure the member that when unplanned leave occurs, every effort is made to fill the vacancy. Staff from Wynyard and Burnie ambulance stations also respond to instances in Circular Head, as required.

Paramedics at Smithton are supported by volunteer ambulance officers who are actively paged to attend cases, if required.

I am also advised that this demand at the Smithton station is comparable to other single branch stations across the state.

During the last election in 2022, the Leader said:

The Government committed to a review of ambulance service demand which will assist the future needs of communities in Tasmania, including the Smithton region. The Government looks forward to seeing the final review, which will give us information we need to help guide investments across the state.

All I can say, Mr President, is the member for Murchison's comments have been heard by the department.

Sadly, I have had during the past 24 hours three more very recent events to relate today, along similar lines.

This is one:

I am writing to give you details of my family's traumatic experience on Tuesday 30 May with regards to our health system and the extreme pressure our paramedics are currently experiencing. When in need of an ambulance to attend my father after a nasty fall in his kitchen, we were told that there was no ambulance available due to another emergency.

My parents live in a unit in the Emmerton Park Seniors Village in Smithton, a self-care unit, not in the high care area. My mother contacted the aged care facility and two nurses visited with pain relief authorised by a second doctor they called. The first doctor refused to help in any way. He was the actual on call doctor.

I will come to that.

My dad lay on the hard kitchen floor in severe pain with a suspected fractured hip for the next four hours. The morphine administered by the caring nurses certainly helped keep him calm, and each time we contacted the ambulance service we were told that they could not give us an estimated time of arrival. My poor dad could not move, or be moved until help arrived.

He fell at 4 p.m. The solo paramedic arrived from Burnie at approximately 8 p.m. He was so distressed to hear that dad had been in that state for so long, he begged us to lobby politicians to help fix the failing system. He had to call for backup and so we waited another hour for a second paramedic, who also contacted our local fire brigade who sent four men to lift dad after he was drugged unconscious to get him in the ambulance outside.

It might not have been the drugs that made him unconscious at this point, you can imagine the pain this poor man was in.

My question is, what would it take to have a permanent vehicle in Smithton equipped with first responders and manned by volunteers in the event of no ambulance being available? If my father was having a heart attack, we would have most likely watched him die. I feel sick knowing that our wonderful health professionals are under such duress and hoping there is help for them soon.

I had a chat to this individual on the phone who expanded further on the situation and the current failings under the ambulance services. Not the paramedics, the service. The paramedics are stretched beyond belief.

Mr President, I received another email related to this and other similar matters. This is from the CEO of Emmerton Park, who looks after the residential aged care as well as the self-managed care.

I understand that you are aware of an issue with a resident in our retirement village last night and the hours he had lie on the floor in agony waiting for an ambulance. We are taking this further as this was a total failure on the part of the health system to look after this gentleman.

I have copied you into the complaint lodged by my director of care regarding the GP who was on call at the hospital last night.

I note that this is a state Government contract position to provide on-call care to those needing medical care at the Smithton District Hospital. This is a person who is under contract to the Government.

My correspondent continues:

I must say it has left me questioning his moral and professional standards. To slam the phone down on someone who is trying to assist while offering nothing himself, while getting paid to provide the service by the state, with other hospital nursing staff who overheard the interaction and them being the one to call and offer assistance. Just not good enough.

That would be an understatement, Mr President.

Fortunately, we have a strong relationship with our GPs in town who did assist us. I passed an ambulance on the road heading to Smithton outside the town shortly after 6.30 p.m., yet I understand he did not arrive until after 8.30 p.m. at this man's house. There was obviously no urgency that had been communicated to the crew.

Or perhaps it was another ambulance on another job. That is my comment. I am not sure. It could be an explanation, but I would like to know what it is. If that was the case, this was not communicated to the family.

He also went onto say he was:

Personally aware of an emergency situation with a young child last night. Fortunately the mother made the decision to rush the child to the hospital after also experiencing a delay in emergency services arriving. This could have resulted in a needless fatality had she not made this call.

I know the Government is working hard to improve health services, but sometimes it's the systems and the people who are in charge of process and decisions that need to be questioned. I am not sure empathy and understanding can be legislated or built into the process.

The third one I want refer to is a different circumstance. I had this this morning. I received another message from another concerned resident in Circular Head. This is not a one-off situation we are dealing with here. This is the person's words, and I have de-identified it:

I want to tell you what happened to my family very recently. On this occasion, one of my loved ones collapsed in their home in Smithton, two kilometers from the Ambulance Station and hospital. I phoned the ambulance at 6:11 p.m. and then again at 6:45 p.m. They finally arrived at 7:10 p.m.

This is an hour after the call.

An hour sitting with my loved one collapsed on the floor, having a massive heart attack was absolutely crazy. Once the paramedics arrived, they were absolutely awesome and hopefully they have saved my loved one's life. My loved one is now in the intensive care in Launceston and at this point [when this was sent] was unconscious. I acknowledge the paramedics do a fantastic job and I know that doctors, nurses and paramedics do not fall out of the sky, but Circular Head is seriously in need of a second ambulance and another paramedic. This has certainly made me think if I should have my family living in Circular Head, with an emergency response like this.

I have a question for the Leader and I hope that she can get some feedback on it, for me.. There is a belief, after talking with some in Circular Head, that only paramedics can access and use the ambulances there. I find that strange. On King Island, we only have volunteers. They man the ambulances, they do all the call-outs and everything. I find it staggering that we cannot have volunteers called to at least attend with an ambulance, while waiting for a paramedic, if there is not one on site. There are supposed to be two in Smithton.

I will follow this up next week if the Leader cannot respond tomorrow; and I accept she may not be able to. My question is, if this is the case, why is this the case? Particularly, when on King Island the volunteers provide all of that service and have access to a fully equipped ambulance.

In any event, this lack of timely service to Circular Head is appalling. It is not a reflection on the very stretched paramedics, as I know they are extremely short-staffed. I know there are commitments in the Budget - that is what I will be talking about next week with the minister and Premier - but how has it got to this point? The population of Circular Head is about 8 400 people. One would have thought, we deserve a timely ambulance service.