Ailing Public Hospitals In Bad Need Of Liposuction

Sydney Morning Herald

Saturday November 17, 2007

I was not surprised to read "Angry surgeon labels hospital a war zone" about Royal North Shore Hospital (November 15). Public hospitals are now filled with faceless, nameless bureaucrats who scratch around for things to do to justify their employment. Dr Don Ross's misdemeanour of squirting saline solution would have seen them all galvanising into action, busily convening a month-long investigation into the incident.

A hospital is like a human body. The doctors, nurses and paramedical staff are like the muscles and the administrators are like the fat. A little fat is essential in maintaining good health. Unfortunately, the public hospitals have simply become too fat over the past decade. There are now layers upon layers of administrators who are making the system unwieldy and inefficient.

I suggest the State and Federal governments start by cutting away half the administrators to start the process of improving the health system. All the savings in salary can then be diverted to more "muscles" to provide better patient care. An intensive "weight-loss" program is what the public hospital system needs.

I was a junior doctor at Royal North Shore 12 years ago. Being totally uninterested in any form of surgery at that stage, I was reluctantly assigned to a term of cardiothoracic surgery. What I observed Dr Ross and Dr David Marshman doing during that time was, without any exaggeration, amazing. Watching them operate was seeing poetry in motion. Drs Ross and Marshman would have undoubtedly saved countless number of lives over the years.

Now that I have been a consultant neurosurgeon for more than six years, I still wonder how much those two master surgeons had stoked my interest in pursuing a career in surgery. Undoubtedly, many other young doctors had been similarly inspired by the same duo.

It is absolutely disgraceful that some nameless hospital administrator, who probably would not know one end of a patient from the other, can treat Dr Ross with such disrespect. Shame on you.

Dr Justin Pik Red Hill, ACT