- In short: Parents have spoken out about what they say is unsatisfactory treatment at Launceston General Hospital, off the back of a damning coroner's finding.
- What's next? The government says there has been a "significant uplift in training and education" for hospital staff statewide.
Melanie Morris vividly remembers the sense of searing anger as she held her barely responsive toddler in her arms in the emergency department for the fourth time in a week.
Her daughter Kaitlyn had a 42-degree Celsius temperature, and her limbs hung slack from her tiny body.
"She looked lifeless, she had no colour in her face," Ms Morris recalled.
It was 2015 and Kaitlyn had been experiencing severe diarrhoea, vomiting and fevers for a week.
Ms Morris was about to be sent home from the Launceston General Hospital (LGH), Tasmania's second-largest, but this time, she refused to leave.
"I said, 'I would like an abdominal X-ray just to rule out anything', and they asked me if I wanted her to be able to have children when she's older, suggesting she wouldn't if they did it.
"I said, 'At this rate, she might not even be here at that point.'
"They responded by saying 'I'm a doctor, you're only a mother, what would you know?'"
Eventually an ultrasound was done, revealing Kaitlyn had a bowel obstruction requiring her to be immediately admitted.
She ended up spending four days in the hospital.
"It could have been so easily different if I hadn't told them I wasn't leaving without the scan," Ms Morris said.
"It could have been the difference between life and death."
Ms Morris said while she knows most of the staff are "great people doing their best", she'd rather make the two-and-half hour drive to Hobart than go back to the LGH.
"If I have to go, I will, but if I have the choice, I'll go to the private hospital in Hobart that has an accident and emergency and pay out of pocket."
'It could have been us'
Last week, a Tasmanian coroner handed down a report that found the death of a 19-month-old girl, referred to in the report as RS, of a bowel obstruction may have been prevented if proper procedures were followed.
Ms Morris said it hit her hard.
"It clearly hasn't changed since I had the same problem with Kaitlyn, which is so upsetting."
Michael Lowe was equally concerned when he read the news.
He and his wife took their son George to the hospital at the end of April with a non-blanching rash, which could have been benign, but also could have indicated potentially lethal conditions like sepsis and meningococcal.
Mr Lowe said it was a nerve-wracking eight hours in the emergency department to get an all-clear, with much of that time spent waiting for a vital blood test.
"It does hurt your faith in the system a bit," he said.
"It could have been us if there was something serious with the rash if it wasn't treated on time."
Mr Lowe said while it was obvious all the staff were working really hard, it's the latest in a line of bad experiences he says his family has had with the LGH since 2020.
Overwork leads to 'mistakes', says ANMF
The coronial finding was at least the fifth made against the LGH in two years.
Back in 2020, emergency registrars at the hospital raised the alarm in a letter to management, outlining bed-block so severe they were frequently treating patients in corridors and the waiting room.
The letter described the situation as "unacceptable, dangerous and unsustainable".
"We come to work each day knowing that our workplace is not safe for patients and that we will be forced to give suboptimal care," the letter read.
Australian Nursing and Midwifery Federation president James Lloyd said the hospital was as under-resourced and understaffed as ever.
"People can only work to 100 per cent, and when you've got more work than people to do that work, unfortunately, something does give and mistakes are made," he said.
"If you don't have adequate staffing, unfortunately, tragedies like this will happen again."
Mr Lloyd said paying nursing staff better was vital to providing a safer emergency department.
"We need to make it attractive to staff to go to the LGH. Launceston is a great city and so is the hospital but we need to pay adequate wages."
'Complete review' undertaken
In response to the death of RS, Department of Health Secretary Kathrine Morgan-Wicks said a complete review was done of the way they use their paediatric evaluation tool.
"There was also a significant uplift in training and education for our staff in the emergency department at the LGH, but also on a statewide basis," she said.
"No tragic death in our system is good enough."
Ms Morgan-Wicks said the department conducted open disclosure with patients so they know exactly what happened and what's been improved since.
"The LGH continues to manage tens of thousands of presentations to our emergency department," she said.
"We take very seriously the training, the education, the capacity of our hospital systems and we work every day to maintain our accreditation.
"But this is a statewide system, so within the LGH if they're received a particular case they have care concerns about and needs to be escalated, they have access to very specialised resources at the Royal Hobart Hospital."
