Angry reaction to nursing service

by Nicholas Duck

Rawson, Erica and Walhalla residents have expressed their anger and frustration at being left without a dedicated nursing service during a passionate and, at times, fiery meeting with West Gippsland Healthcare Group representatives last week.

Close to 50 people attended the public meeting at the Rawson Community Health Centre on Wednesday morning with many forced to wait outside as numbers far exceeded WGHG's expectations.

The meeting, which was originally slated to take place at the local hall before a venue change, was to discuss the departure of the area's current community health nurse Nadine McDonald, who will be taking 11 months long service leave beginning this week.

WGHG has opted to continue servicing the area through its district nursing service (DNS), in which residents can request a nurse to come to the area and be treated on a case by case basis, rather than sending a replacement to cover Ms McDonald's permanent three days a week.

Hosted by WGHG chief executive Shannon Wight, allied and com­munity health exec­ut­ive dir­ector of per­form­ance and health Belinda Brookes and acting deputy director of clinical operations Casey Cook, the meeting saw residents voice a number of concerns around the changes. These included response times, services for both elderly and young residents, the possibility of having to travel to Traralgon or Warragul for treatment, and a potential increase in 000 calls.
Several speakers also were highly critical of WGHG's decision to host the meeting during work hours with limited advertising, as well as the lack of consultation until now.
Ms Wight, who said it was her first time visiting the area in her chief executive role, asked several times for the community to give WGHG a chance to understand their needs before later admitting the organisation should already know what they were.

"Let's have a shot at it then, that's the deal. Because you're right, I should know. But I don't know. So now we are here, albeit too late according to some in the room and that's not our intent," she said.

Emotions ran hot at times as multiple speakers relayed how important Ms McDonald's permanent hours had been to the community, with one woman storming out after telling Ms Wight "you haven't done anything to assure anyone here."
Ms Wight eventually committed to a four-week review process, though did not commit to replacing Ms McDonald's 20-plus contact hours during that period, instead saying WGHG would maintain "visibility" in the area for the next month.
"We've had someone here doing this job for a really long period of time and you're used to it, and we've got used to it. And you're right, we absolutely should have had ourselves sorted out well and truly before now and we haven't. I'll own that and I'll say sorry for that but the intent is to understand the community's needs and provide a service that's ongoing," she said.
"To be very clear, the service is not being closed. We will learn the needs of the community."
But many attendees remained unconvinced. Speaking after the meeting, local mothers Shannon Richards and Krystal Galea said the meeting hadn't addressed their concerns.
"My husband grew up here and he can't count on his hands how many times he's had to use the service growing up. Pulling stitches out, patching up snake bites, those kinds of things. He would come here as a child and I want that for my kids and this community," Ms Richards said.
Ms Galea lamented the lack of community consultation before this point. "I feel they weren't prepared. They were definitely not prepared, there was no community consultation prior to this meeting," she said.
It was a similar story for siblings Julie Harris and Graham Bastin, whose 91-year-old mother is the oldest member of the community.
"We've lost a lot of services up here in the past," Ms Harris said. "We've been fighting to keep this clinic open for years. We used to have doctors up here, we fought and fought and fought and that all fell apart but we managed to keep the district nurse. If we hadn't had someone as dedicated as Nadine it probably wouldn't have survived this long."
"They just told us what they've done and what they're going to do and now I think they've realised that's not really going to wash," Mr Bastin said.