The head of two major city hospitals has been sacked just 16 months into a five-year contract for a failure to “collaborate”. Central Adelaide Local Health Network chief executive Julia Squire was scheduled to return from personal leave on Tuesday but will instead permanently leave the service after she was dismissed by SA Health chief executive Vickie Kaminski. Ms Kaminski said she’d decided Ms Squire’s future on Monday night, a comment derided as “nonsense” by Transforming Health critic Warren Jones, who said the decision had been made two weeks ago. She said SA Health deputy chief executive Len Richards would continue to act as CALHN chief executive, and bring the consultative approach it needed. “Looking what we need to do over the next short while as we get ready to transition into the new RAH, we really need somebody with a more collaborative, more consultative style and that’s what we think Len Richards brings to the role in the interim,” she said. “What we need to do is to give people an opportunity to feel included in the decisions — if people plan the battle they don’t battle the plan — so we have to have them involved and looking at what it is that we’re going to be doing in the new RAH, how we’re going to be looking after patients.” CALHN takes in the Royal Adelaide Hospital and the Queen Adelaide Hospital. It’s unclear how much Ms Squire will be paid out but Opposition health spokesman Stephen Wade said he understood it would be in excess of $300,000.
February 2, 2017
A s.185 (Enterprise agreement) application by Australian Nursing and Midwifery Federation for its Abbotsford Private Hospital & Blackwood River Clinic Registered and Enrolled Nurses Enterprise Agreement 2016 has been approved by Commissioner Gregory in Melbourne yesterday.
February 2, 2017
The IRT Group has appointed aged care industry expert Patrick Reid and Illawarra businessman Peter Fitzgerald to its board.
February 2, 2017
An application by Banksia Palliative Care (s.240 – Application to deal with a bargaining dispute) will be determined by Commissioner Cribb in the Fair Work Commission 11 Exhibition Street Melbourne at 4.30pm.
February 2, 2017
The Health Services Union and Sunraysia Residential Services have a (s.739 – Application to deal with a dispute in relation to flexible working arrangements) matter before Deputy President Hamilton in the Fair Work Commission 11 Exhibition Street Melbourne at 10.15am.
February 2, 2017
A hospital security guard who turned up to work with a 0.2 per cent blood-alcohol level has lost his bid for more than $450,000 compensation, claiming he was “assaulted” by having to give blood and urine tests. James Pere was working at Gladstone Hospital in central Queensland, when colleagues and nurses noticed his speech was slurred and he smelt of alcohol on August 2, 2012. Another guard took Mr Pere to the hospital’s emergency department, where a nurse took blood and urine samples. She told the District Court in Brisbane that her notes from the night recorded he consented to samples being taken. Tests on the samples which showed a blood-alcohol level of 0.2 per cent and he was told to go home. Mr Pere claimed in court he had never consented to giving the samples, accused medical staff of assaulting him and sought $464,488 in compensation for psychiatric injury and loss of wages. “I find the plaintiff’s credibility so poor that his evidence should not be acted upon where it is in conflict with other credible accounts,” District Court judge Brendan Butler said in his judgment. “With particular reference to the issue of consent, I find the plaintiff’s account that he was penetrated by a needle while he was talking to the doctor and before he realised it was to happen, to be implausible.” In court, Mr Pere also denied being fired from a job as a security guard at a Gladstone hotel for being drunk at work the following year. His boss testified that Mr Pere was found “quite intoxicated” and watching a football game on his phone and had his employment terminated on the spot.
February 2, 2017
A former Tasmanian aged care worker who took photographs of himself with naked residents without their consent has escaped time in jail but will be listed on the sex offenders register. Adam Matthew Pettit was working at the One-Care Barossa Park aged care facility in Glenorchy when he took four pictures of female patients in various states of undress in July 2015. The court heard the 32-year-old took “lewd photographs” of himself next to the residents, while he was striking various poses. He then sent one of the images to a female colleague. She did not report it to management until September after she showed it to her mother, who also worked at the facility. Pettit said he could not explain why he took the photographs. Magistrate Hay sentenced Petit to two months’ jail, wholly suspended on the condition he be of good behaviour for three years, and ordered that he perform 100 hours community service.
February 2, 2017
Community Living Options is facing a (s.394 – Application for unfair dismissal remedy) before Senior Deputy President O’Callaghan in the Fair Work Commission Level 6 Riverside Centre North Terrace Adelaide (Spalding).
