The new president of the Australian Medical Association says many healthcare workers have been shocked by an attitude that stretched hospitals and exhausted staff are the cost of doing business in a pandemic.
New AMA chief Steve Robson says he will continue to push the federal government to boost funding for public hospitals by billions each year., while isolating at home with COVID-19, he said trying to put a hospital staff roster together was “proving almost impossible” as many hundreds of COVID-19 patients continued to occupy beds that would otherwise be filled by people with other conditions.
“I think that has been a shock to a lot of healthcare workers, that perhaps there is a sense that they don’t matter … and hospitals are absolutely stretched beyond the breaking point, but, ‘That’s okay, it’s the cost of doing business’.”, as tensions between the Victorian and federal branches of the group persists, saying it had more influence than ever, because of its ability to bring a consensus view from the medical community.
“I think we can bring a sort of coherence to the voice that other organisations always struggle to do, and I think we’ve seen through the pandemic, we’ve seen through the rise of social media, it’s just given so many people a voice. The voice that cuts through is just about always the AMA.”Robson said he would continue to push the federal government to boost funding for public hospitals by billions each year.
Health officer talking about the vaccine