Hospital ordered to comply with notice to improve workers’ conditions

Safework SA has given management at the Royal Adelaide Hospital a month to comply with a new notice to improve conditions for its workers.

Transcript

00:00During a site visit to the Royal Adelaide Hospital last month, SafeWork SA inspectors

00:06found an ED struggling with patient demand and failing to minimise the risks to workers'

00:12psychological health and safety, issuing an improvement notice with the deadline of three

00:17weeks that passed today.

00:20Central Adelaide have provided the right information to SafeWork SA, they're certainly expecting

00:25that that will meet the requirements that SafeWork have set forth.

00:29Earlier today, SafeWork SA agreed, saying it is satisfied the RAH has complied with

00:34the improvement notice, it hasn't issued a fine, but has handed out another improvement

00:39notice to further assist the hospital in improving its work health and safety management systems.

00:45The RAH has a month to comply.

00:48The opposition says SA's hospital system is buckling.

00:52The hospital system is not safer since the SafeWork SA report was handed down.

00:57We know that because there have been a couple of high profile assaults on clinicians during

01:03the window since the report was provided.

01:06Last week, three staff in the RAH ED were assaulted by a mental health patient.

01:10SA Health says it recently added an extra security team to the ED, brought in more mental

01:15health staff to support patients and has made more duress alarms available.

01:20The doctors' union says more longer term solutions are needed.

01:25It's not safe in our emergency departments and we actually need to put in place appropriate

01:29systems, appropriate supports, particularly during this winter.

01:33The government says it's trying.

01:35We know that there's a long term need for us to improve the capacity of our system and

01:40that's what we've been setting out to do right from the beginning.

01:43The statewide Code Yellow internal emergency continues across the health network.