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During a surprise visit by the NSW Premier, a Sydney hospital made an attempt to “clean up” its packed halls by concealing mentally ill patients.
On Tuesday afternoon, Dominic Perrottet visited Westmead Hospital to chat with the workers. This prompted management to make hurried preparations to “pretty things up” before he gave a speech in front of the public.
A hospital employee asked for a registered nurse from Cumberland Hospital to look after many patients with mental health issues, according to a Daily Telegraph story.
The nurse was supposed to be employed just to “transfer the patients.”
‘They (the hospital) did a bit of cleaning up beforehand … There are patients being treated in corridors and on the floor,’ a source told the publication.
‘One of the big areas where that happens is mental health admissions who haven’t been taken to Cumberland Hospital.’
The source claims senior staff quickly told workers to move mentally ill patients out of the emergency department after Mr Perrottet made his impromptu appearance.
The area is reportedly constantly full of mentally ill patients waiting for a transfer to nearby facilities, including Cumberland, with some forced to sleep on the floor.
One Westmead staff member said they were told of the Premier’s arrival briefly before he showed up – but by that stage the mentally ill patients had been moved from the area.
‘It looks like, to pretty things up, they were (moved),’ they said,
‘If this was the solution, I don’t know why it wasn’t used before.’
The internal email from Westmead to Cumberland was confirmed by NSW Nurses and Midwives Association member Nick Howson.
‘We were asked if we could provide a mental health-trained nurse to go up to ED … to manage the large number of mental health patients at Westmead,’ he said.
‘They were specifically going to move the patients…’
A spokesman for the Western Sydney Local Health District said the move was part of ‘daily patient flow’ and ‘no patients were moved or treated differently in any way before or during the visit’.