Making EMERGENCY

Journalist Tom O'Callaghan on why the Bendigo Advertiser made the 'Emergency' series

Transcript

00:00So we really wanted to take readers inside emergency for a few reasons. One

00:10is that it kind of feels like you can't really understand some of the big

00:15issues that are affecting health services at the moment without really

00:19having an understanding of the people who are at the front lines. So that can

00:24mean things like how do they deal with ramping, how do they deal with

00:27occupational health and safety, violence against staff, and also just really

00:32practical questions like why are wait times so long on a Sunday night?

00:41So not as many as we thought. There was some discussion with my editor and

00:45deputy editor in the early days of planning this about what it might mean

00:50if the Bendigo Health Group came back and said we want to vet everything

00:54before it goes live. Unfortunately if that had have been the case the story

01:00would have been over before it was begun. But what we found was that Bendigo

01:04Health bucked a trend that we kind of have or at least a reputation that we

01:08see with health care groups where they were a bit more open to maybe even

01:13seeing the uncomfortable side of these things as they played out on the night.

01:19There's a picture that Darren Howe, our photographer, got of these hands on a bed.

01:29I was there when he took that photo. I still have no idea how it is that he

01:34managed to get the lighting, the angle, and the emotion of these fingers of

01:39these two pairs of hands. We're very lucky to have someone like Darren Howe.

01:45He's really a world-class photographer and he's right here in our backyard and

01:49like a lot of times when I work with Darren I'm in awe of what he can do.