GP says patients who visited ACT walk-in centres faced poor health outcomes

The Canberra Times

Dr Emily Rushton, the ACT representative for the Royal College of General Practitioners NSW/ACT calls on political parties to promise an independent review of walk-in centres.

Transcript

00:00GPs are calling on political parties to promise an independent review of ACT's walk-in centres.

00:06Dr Emily Rushton in Tuggeranong said some of her patients had bad experiences that could

00:11have been avoided. We're concerned that the ACT walk-in centres may be leading to fragmentation

00:16of care and poor patient outcomes. Two examples of this that I have had in recent months are a

00:21patient who was prescribed an antibiotic for a seemingly simple skin infection that was an

00:26antibiotic that was not suitable to that patient's severe liver disease. In a second example the

00:31patient was deemed too complex for care at the walk-in centre and was referred back to their GP

00:36but wasn't able to follow up as they had a cognitive impairment that prevented them from

00:40following that instruction and that patient later ended up in hospital with a severe infection that

00:45could have been treated at that first presentation. She said GPs across the city saw patients who had

00:51similar experiences. Dr Rushton said she did not blame nurses instead she said they needed more

00:57support. We have an incredibly skilled group of nurses working in these walk-in centres

01:02but they're relying on the patient to fully disclose their medical history in order to

01:07inform their decision making and they're making decisions without any backup from medical

01:11practitioners. It's not fair for the nurses to be expected to manage anything that walks in the door

01:18without full access to the patient's medical history and without any backup from other medical practitioners.

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