oneworldtalk

Kate Benson Medical Reporter
August 19, 2009

DOCTORS at one of Sydney's oldest hospitals are demanding the State Government urgently rebuild what they claim is ''a slum'', with possum urine on the walls and dangerous cabling snaking across the floors in the operating theatres.

More than 40 senior clinicians at Hornsby Ku-ring-gai Hospital have called for a meeting with the Health Minister, John Della Bosca, in a bid to have the hospital renovated before it becomes too unsafe for staff and patients.

Doctors say most of the operating theatres lack emergency arrest buttons, forcing nurses to yell for help; the theatres are too small for modern equipment, which blocks hallways; and wires hang from ceilings and cables run across the floors, putting staff at risk of electrocution.

Some ceilings had collapsed from rain damage and possum nests were found near wards.

''It is offensive and medieval,'' the hospital's clinical director of surgery and anaesthetics, Pip Middleton, said yesterday.

''This hospital serves a burgeoning population of young and old with new housing developments everywhere and is on the crossroads of major freeways, yet we have a significant issue with ageing infrastructure.''

Hornsby Ku-ring-gai Hospital admits about 18,000 people a year and has more than 1500 staff, but its physical condition was ''one of the worst in the state'', the chairman of the medical staff council, Richard Harris, said.

''It is really 19th-century stuff. The only thing that keeps this place going is the goodwill and expertise of the staff.''

It was one of the few in NSW without a coronary care unit, despite research 60 years ago that mortality rates from cardiac arrest were halved if patients were treated in a specialist unit rather than a medical ward, Jason Sharp, a cardiologist, said.

The executive clinical director and head of rehabilitation and aged care, Sue Kurrle, said most of the hospital was ''slum-like and primitive with patients living cheek-by-jowl''. ''There is no privacy, there are holes in the floor, possum wee on the walls. Staff have to jostle to look at the one computer on each ward to get blood test and X-ray results. It is simply third-rate.''

The geriatric and rehabilitation wards survived on bequests from former patients, she said. ''We'd be living in a slum like the rest of the hospital if it wasn't for that money.''

A spokeswoman for Mr Della Bosca said staff had been given $1.3 million for maintenance last year and $21 million had gone towards a building to house a new emergency department and maternity ward.

The chief executive of the Northern Sydney Central Coast Area Health Service, Matthew Daly, will meet doctors today.