I’ve been the Nurse Manager at the Prince of Wales Hospital Emergency Department for five years.
When I joined the department 21 years ago, the ED was seeing around 28,000 presentations each year.
That figure has now increased to just over 59,000 presentations each year, and is growing.
Prince of Wales Hospital has one of only two public Spinal Units in the state, and has the state’s only public Hyperbaric Unit. We are also one of the few hospitals in the state that provide clot retrieval for patients with acute strokes. This treatment really is one where ‘moments matter’.
Our ED is a very busy place, especially over Christmas and New Year. During the festive season, more people are out celebrating and participating activities than might have been a good idea at the time.
Our staff are trained to deal with almost any scenario, and no one day is ever the same.
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I’ve seen it all, from a young man who sustained a spinal cord injury in a motorbike accident to a thrill-seeker who almost died in a sky-diving accident when her parachute failed.
Our ED currently has three resuscitation beds, 12 acute beds, 10 short stay beds, nine fast track chairs and nine treatment spaces in exam/consult rooms, but we’re expanding to help treat more patients.
We’re currently in the process of adding an additional eight beds to the ED, and hopefully by 2022 will have a new ED as part of the $720 million Randwick Hospitals Campus Redevelopment.
Hospitals aren’t just places where people come to be treated – many of our staff are also engaged in translational research that is leading to improved patient outcomes.
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I worked as an Emergency Department Nurse for many years. I worked with both adults in major trauma departments and children in specialised paediatric Emergency Departments. It's a thankless jobs, you see things that most people should never see. Most of which stays with you for the rest of your life.
Even today I am haunted by some of the images that can randomly flash in to my mind. The twins that drowned on Christmas Day, the elderly gentleman that was in full cardiac arrest that we had to let die to try and save the life of an 18 year old road trauma victim simply because we did not have enough resources for both, the family that I had to sit with and tell that their mother had died before they could get to the hospital, the young motorbike rider who's hand I held when he was told that he had a complete spinal fracture and would never walk again the family I cried with when they lost a daughter to meningococcal meningitis.
Not to mention that flashbacks of horrific injuries and traumas that I have to live with everyday. Many of which would horrify most people. So much so that I don;t even discuss them with my wife, who is also a Nurse. They're just a part of my life now.
Yet we expect our Emergency Department Nurses to soldier on in Departments that are under resourced and underfunded. Where they are abused and assaulted almost on a daily basis. Where they do extraordinary work with old equipment, in cramped and overcrowded conditions and with little or no support.
Emergency Departments and Nurses should not have to be fund raising to buy lifesaving equipment. This equipment are part of the basic resources that every Department should have on hand and should be fully funded by our Governments. It's not right that Doctors and Nurses should have to go cap in hand to the public begging for the resources that they need just to help save lives. Surely our commitment and dedication to others and to ensuring that if you come in to a Department we will do our absolute best to make sure that you have every chance of leaving the Department better off than we you came in.