Woman miscarries on chair at Royal Hobart Hospital because of bed shortage.

By: Kieran Jones. 

A woman has suffered a miscarriage in a chair at the Royal Hobart Hospital because there was no bed available.

Neroli Ellis from the Nursing and Midwifery Federation said nine beds that could have been used by the woman, who attended the hospital’s emergency department, were sitting empty that night.

She said the beds were unavailable because there was insufficient funding to fully staff the hospital.

“It is absolutely a dangerous situation at the moment, and we are calling on the Government to provide more funding to reopen some of these closed beds,” she said.

Ms Ellis said staff had reported additional issues at the hospital.

“We’ve got situations in ED [emergency department] where mental health clients can’t even see natural light and they’re there for two to three days,” she said.

“That breaches human rights conventions.”

Tasmanian AMA president Dr Tim Greenaway said the incident reflected the dire state of Tasmania’s health system.

“The fact that this poor lady had to endure the indignity of what she went through in a chair when there were no beds available is a reflection on a system in crisis,” he said.

The hospital said elective surgery cases would be temporarily postponed over Easter.

“The problem is inadequate capacity, inadequate staffing, inadequate bed numbers,” Dr Greenaway said.

In January, Health Minister Michael Ferguson was forced to apologise after a 95-year-old woman was forced to lie on the floor while waiting to be seen at the hospital.

Mr Ferguson said unprecedented demand was straining the system but he was disappointed in the response of emergency departments.

“To date, in recent weeks, our response has simply not been good enough,” he said.

Mr Ferguson said he had commissioned the Health Department and Tasmanian Health Service leadership to deliver a report in 24 hours.

“I’m putting people on notice that I’m willing to consider action that would disrupt the old ways of running hospital emergency departments,” he said.

This post originally appeared on ABC News.