A city-wide strike involving up to 300 nurses and midwives at a Sydney hospital where a two-year-old boy died has been cancelled at the eleventh hour.
Staff at Northern Beaches Hospital, run by private operator Healthscope, planned to walk off the job from 6am on Friday in a 26-hour industrial ban.
But a late-night decision from the Fair Work Commission ruled that no strikes are to take place over the next 24 hours despite growing calls from nurses who say they are not receiving adequate support from Healthscope.
Nurses from the Prince of Wales, Campbelltown, Newcastle and Nepean hospitals were also due to take part in the action.
The industrial action comes just hours after the devastated parents of two-year-old Joe Massa called for a parliamentary review into the hospital in Sydney’s north.
Elouise and Danny Massa took their ‘bright and loving’ baby boy Joe to the hospital on the morning of September 14 after he spent the night violently vomiting and retching at their Balgowlah home.
The toddler died in the hospital’s intensive care unit two days later after he entered cardiac arrest and suffered severe and irreversible brain damage.
The couple believe Joe would still be alive today if he wasn’t miscategorised by a emergency department (ED) nurse at the end of their 12-hour night shift.
Joe Massa (pictured) died at Northern Beache’s Hospital after he entered cardiac arrest and suffered severe and irreversible brain damage in September last year
Staff at the embattled Northern Beaches Hospital in Sydney’s north (pictured) will walk off the job from 6am on Friday in a 26-hour industrial ban
The toddler was classified triage category three which flagged to doctors in the ED he would require treatment within 30 minutes.
But an independent review found Joe’s dangerously elevated heartbeat and ‘pale and floppy’ appearance meant he should have been documented as category two or in the ‘red zone’ which would have seen him treated within 10 minutes.
Instead, Joe spent two-and-a-half hours sitting in an emergency department chair where he was misdiagnosed as suffering from gastro.
The two-year-old went limp, his heart rate continued to skyrocket and he was losing consciousness as his mother became more distressed.
He was not given a bed until Ms Massa screamed ‘my son has gone blind’ as Joe’s eyes began to roll back into his head.
Hours later at 10.30am, the two-year-old was transferred to the resuscitation bay where 17 minutes later he went into cardiac arrest.
After 29 minutes of CPR Joe had suffered severe and irreversible brain damage, and his life support was turned off two days later.
Joe’s distraught parents had requested IV drips and monitoring equipment to see his vitals and believe these interventions could have saved their son’s life.
Elouise Massa says Joe would still be alive if not for a series of medical blunders (pictured)
Joe was diagnosed with gastro by doctors at Northern Beaches Hospital and spent two-and-a-half hours sitting in an emergency department chair when he required urgent care
‘No parent should have to walk out of a hospital with their bags instead of their child,’ a statement from the Massa’s read.
‘Our son should be here today. He had his whole life ahead of him, and we trusted Northern Beaches Hospital to provide the care he needed.
‘Instead, he was failed at every level.’
A serious adverse report submitted to the NSW Health Ministry in December found there was a ‘delay and failure to recognise deterioration’ in Joe’s health but that his death could not be definitively ruled as ‘preventable’.
The couple have demanded a comprehensive review of Northern Beaches Hospital and are calling on the NSW government to re-evaluate their contract with Healthscope – the private operator responsible for the public wards in the hospital.
A Healthscope spokesman said the operator understood Joe’s death had ’caused unimaginable heartache and grief for the family’.
‘We met with the family to apologise and hear directly about their tragic experience,’ it read. We will continue to support the family in any way that we can as we implement the improvements identified in the review, including improvements around triaging processes and internal escalation processes,’ he said.
NSW Premier Chris Minns described the situation as every parent’s ‘worst nightmare’ and refused to rule out future reviews into Joe’s death.
