Cockroaches at the operating table

Gee Whizz...ain't socialised medicine wonderful. Why you even get free cockroaches!

A FORMER senior doctor at Sydney's Royal North Shore Hospital (RNSH) says complaints that he had to kill cockroaches on operating theatre tables during surgery were ignored by management.

It has also been confirmed that an anaesthetist at the hospital was forced to catch an unconscious patient after an operating table broke in half.

The revelations are contained in a submission by Dr Jeffery Sleye Hughes, who worked at the hospital between 1981-86 and 1995-2007, to a parliamentary inquiry into the running of RNSH.

The inquiry heard the growing list of complaints about the hospital have been having an effect on staff, with reports of nurses being spat on and abused in the street.

Dr Sleye Hughes said he was forced to resign because of an "endless procession of events" that highlighted the "bureaucratic negligence" and "medical indifference" at the hospital.

His submission contains reports on nine incidents, which include instances of patients being lied to about the delay in their surgery and inadequate surgical instruments being used to undertake day-to-day surgery.

He said he had forwarded the complaints to administration, only to have them "ignored or shelved".

"(The incidents included) killing live cockroaches on operating theatre tables during operations and no response when I forwarded a written complaint and response requested," his submission said.....