I work in a non-medical role in a hospital. Yesterday, many staff at the hospital had to work double shifts (8am-midnight) to care for the patients due to lack of staff. This is illegal, but the hospital has NO choice. On one ward there was two registered nurses and two enrolled nurses looking after 39 patients. Constantly there is mistakes in regards to medication. How many cause injury and/or discomfort to patients?, I have no idea. I read an article online a while ago about the lack of accountability hospital staff would take in regards to mistakes...do you blame them?.

I would suggest avoiding hospital at all costs...unless you have no choice. Educate yourself on your treatment, drugs and procedures in relation to your care. If you can't do it yourself, get someone to keep an eye on what drugs are being administered and make sure the drugs are beening given in the correct quantities...learn fast, about everything.

Forget who is to blame, what can be done about it?.

StG
very Good advise.
I know! I will get my head bitten off but I am sick of seeing old and frail people waiting for hours while new people to the Gold Coast push in with their diseases they bring with them from overseas.
We have so many students attending uni and migrants and visitors the LOCALS can not get served.

For God sake open a hospital for locals ONLY and look after OUR sick and frail tax payers FIRST.
Enough iS Enough.

St
Good Comment
I am sick of seeing the aged and frail kept waiting for hours while migrants get served first. they bring nearly all the diseases from their country and its our elderly and very young who suffer.
Open some hospitals for locals only so our aged and can get the care they deserve.

ST G there go stable debate! hospitals for locals only! bringing disease in from over seas?
Yes maybe that part is true but surely we need better ways to treat every one who is ill?
The authors post as it comes from some one who knows is giving us one answer of the hundreds we need.
Do not use hospitals as the first and only answer, far too many just go so they have some human contact.
We need 24 hours medical centers along side every hospital.
We must train more doctors and nurses.
We need more beds not less.
We need to care more about those who are ill and those who care for them.

P.A.L.E ~ Care based on race is something I'm not going to even touch. There's so much wrong with that comment. Some keys words from my thoughts about it; Nazi, hypocratic oath, humanity.

Belly ~ Like I said, I'm not in a medical role, but from what I've seen the Australian health care system isn't at the sharp end. Definitely we couldn't compare it against third world health care but it isn't stepping forward in leaps and bounds. It seems that private health care are having MAJOR dramas with staff as well as public so that is obviously the first place the government ABSOLUTELY HAS to address...but the thing is...they know this, what are they doing about it?.

A very good debate took place in a now gone thread on this subject some years ago.
I was part of it and it extended to many posts over some weeks, it never found answers we could use right now to fix it.
If such answers did exist even the worst politicians would surely implement them now?
However money is an issue, how much more can we squeeze out of our limited tax payers?
I truly think an out of hospital medical service 24/7 that truly sends all who need help other than what they can give to hospital is a start, we over use hospitals.
In fairness to pale, I hope she meant ,as south east Queenslanders seem to, that we tourists while spending money on the Gold coast, may be even settling there one day, are unwanted in hospitals ext.
Not in our car park, our restaurant ,our shopping center ext.
However if while visiting our southern city's and falling ill?
You could hardly see us placing them on the footpath to die can you?
We Australians must get informed about our national tax income, it is less than one city in say England or America.
We can do much better in health and so much more but it will cost us.