Mr DUNHAM - 2001-02-21
Mr DUNHAM (Health, Family and Children’s Services): Mr Speaker, I did undertake during Question Time to provide an additional answer to a question.
The opposition spokesman talked about the Accident and Emergency Department and the issue of accreditation. I have received advice that the accreditation for Accident and Emergency is currently under review by the College of Emergency Medicine, and the team will be arriving in August.
It is important I describe what that actually involves. They are talking about the capacity of the Accident and Emergency facility to oversee a registrar to provide them with specialist status. We have two accredited specialists there – Dr Bronwyn Pierce and Dr Didier Palmer – one of whom is accepted by the Australian College of Emergency Medicine.
The issue of the status of that particular facility in terms of clientele coming to it is unaffected. What we have there are senior specialists and registrars. As I said, we benchmark with the rest of Australia so that we are quite capable of providing more than adequate services to our clientele. The Royal Darwin Hospital continues for the next four years to be accredited as a teaching facility, and we will have registrars going through the A&E. If the insinuation is that somehow the accreditation of the college for its purposes of training a specialist somehow diminishes the services that Territorians can receive, the answer is, no, it does not.
The opposition spokesman talked about the Accident and Emergency Department and the issue of accreditation. I have received advice that the accreditation for Accident and Emergency is currently under review by the College of Emergency Medicine, and the team will be arriving in August.
It is important I describe what that actually involves. They are talking about the capacity of the Accident and Emergency facility to oversee a registrar to provide them with specialist status. We have two accredited specialists there – Dr Bronwyn Pierce and Dr Didier Palmer – one of whom is accepted by the Australian College of Emergency Medicine.
The issue of the status of that particular facility in terms of clientele coming to it is unaffected. What we have there are senior specialists and registrars. As I said, we benchmark with the rest of Australia so that we are quite capable of providing more than adequate services to our clientele. The Royal Darwin Hospital continues for the next four years to be accredited as a teaching facility, and we will have registrars going through the A&E. If the insinuation is that somehow the accreditation of the college for its purposes of training a specialist somehow diminishes the services that Territorians can receive, the answer is, no, it does not.
Last updated: 09 Aug 2016