Adelaide hospitals declare major incident alerts, as patient says she could have bled out while being ramped

Two of Adelaide’s major hospitals were forced to simultaneously declare major incidents on Monday night due to emergency department overcrowding.

The Royal Adelaide Hospital (RAH) and Queen Elizabeth Hospital (QEH) implemented code yellow alerts in response to the increased demand.

It came just one month after the RAH last issued a “major incident alert”, with the chief of SA’s Health Department then saying “a range of initiatives to alleviate the pressure on our hospitals and staff” was being enacted.

It also follows repeated warnings from unions that ongoing problems in the health system are putting patients’ lives at risk, with one young woman today saying she “could have died” after being ramped while internally bleeding last month.

In an email to all Central Adelaide Local Health Network (CALHN) staff on Monday, operations director Brendan Docherty said a network incident command centre had been activated to help coordinate and deploy resources during the crises.

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The memo instructed staff to meet regularly to discuss and review which patients could be discharged.

All non-clinical, non-essential activities were also ordered to be rescheduled for 48 hours from the time of the email to allow clinicians to focus on “patients, interventions and flow”.

At the time the code yellow was implemented, audio from one of the hospital’s PA systems declared: “A major incident alert remains in place and will continue today due to high demand.”

“Action planning is underway through clinical leadership. Please ensure all clinical resources have been deployed to patient-facing functions and follow the direction of your clinical leadership teams.”

In a statement issued via SA Health today, CALHN said rescheduling elective surgery was “always a last resort”.

“We will work to rearrange all surgeries over the coming days,” the unattributed statement read.

“As always, we must prioritise our patients with the most urgent needs and we apologise to anyone who has been affected by the measures currently in place.

Woman with ectopic pregnancy ramped for hours

But the Ambulance Employees Association (AEA) said the issue-plagued health system continued to adversely affect patients, saying a six-month-old baby with breathing difficulties was left waiting for an ambulance for 45 minutes on Monday.

The union said the baby was a priority 2 case and should have been seen within 16 minutes.

Young mother Samantha Brown, 21, also told of her experience on June 29, when she started experiencing “excruciating” abdominal pain while cooking dinner.

“It actually took my breath away. I was struggling to breathe a lot,” she said.

When an ambulance arrived, an ECG of Ms Brown’s heart showed it was “a bit out of whack”, so she was taken to Flinders Medical Centre.

She said she left home between 8:30pm and 9:00pm, and got into a bed at Flinders between 2:00am and 2:30am.

“They did the ultrasound straight away and saw I was bleeding internally,” Ms Brown said.

“[They did] emergency keyhole surgery straight away … I lost a litre of blood, so two blood transfusions is what I had.”

Ms Brown said if she had been ramped for any longer, she “probably would have bled out”.

“I could have died.”

Nurse fatigue ‘endemic’, union says

The AEA’s Leah Watkins said it was frustrating to constantly have to share negative patient stories with the public, but she said something had to change. 

Premier Steven Marshall said the state government was investing a billion dollars in improvements to the health system.

“Look, it would have been heartbreaking and very frustrating for the [baby’s] family for that delay, and that’s why we’re working extraordinarily hard to expand our emergency capacity across the state with another 140 beds to come online,” Mr Marshall said on Tuesday.

However, Ms Watkins said expanding the hospital emergency departments was not enough.

“This is a whole-of-health crisis that no amount of EDs (emergency departments) will fix, and Steven Marshall is delusional if he thinks that’s going to resolve ramping any time soon,” she said.

The Australian Nursing and Midwifery Federation’s (ANMF) SA branch said on Monday there were 122 patients waiting for a ward bed in EDs across the city.

The ANMF said 114 patients were “crammed” in the queue on Tuesday afternoon, with 45 of them in the RAH and 21 at the QEH.

“These appalling wait times are resulting in delayed and missed care for patients, with exhausted nurses forced to work double shifts because of lack of staff … and yet at a time when the government is, inexplicably, intent on shedding staff through voluntary separation packages.”