Canberra Hospital workers have publicly attacked Canberra Liberals Health spokesman Jeremy Hanson, demanding to know how they can trust him after his handling of the data doctoring affair.
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Mr Hanson endured a difficult afternoon yesterday at the Australian Nursing Federation election forum and conceded that the event had been ''prickly''.
The Liberals frontbencher was subject to hostile questioning from the health workers who gathered in the hospital's auditorium yesterday over ''disparaging comments'' he made in the media about emergency department clinicians following the scandal. Mr Hanson was asked to explain how he would ''build a constructive relationship'' with the health directorate following his attacks on the ''integrity and motives of emergency department clincians''.
''I don't want my comments to be misconstrued,'' he told the forum.
''In reading the Auditor General's report what you'll find out is that the individual who doctored the data did so because, in her words, she felt fearful.
''She did it because she felt pressure. She said she did it because of the political imperative.
''I have no questions with the integrity of the staff.''
But Mr Hanson was forced to respond again when another worker at the forum accused him of failing to answer the original question.
The staff member demanded the Liberals MLA tell nurses at the event how he would ''get us to trust you'' if he became Health Minister.
''I think it is an extraordinarily bad situation where an executive director at Canberra Hospital has doctored information out of fear,'' Mr Hanson said.
''I'm not comfortable with that working environment. I'm not comfortable with what's happened.
''That doesn't mean that I'd be coming in with any sort of change to the regime or anything like that.''
But Mr Hanson said he made ''no apologies'' for criticising the culture he claimed led to the falsifying of 11,700 patient records. ''I want to support the staff, I want to encourage the staff, I want the staff to be open,'' he said. ''If there are problems, I want to help solve those problems, I want the staff to be part of that. I want to say let's work together. You have a situation where that clearly hasn't happened.''
Chief Minister Katy Gallagher told the forum that she ''regretted enormously'' the damage that had been done to the emergency department's reputation ''through the political football that was the data integrity audit''.
''There's other motivations for that, but what we need to do now, is make sure the data is correct, continue to address the pressures in the emergency department and move on. And I can predict that on October 21st I doubt there'll be a mention of data integrity again for some time.''
Mr Hanson had an angry exchange with Ms Gallagher and two staff members who approached him at the end of the forum.
ACT Greens health spokeswoman Amanda Bresnan told the forum she was frustrated debate over the data scandal had focussed on personal attacks ''instead of actually addressing the substantive issues around it''.
Hospital workers asked the three MLAs to explain how assessment of performance could become more focused on qualitative measures and patient outcomes, rather than quantitative measures like waiting times. Staff also questioned the parties on how they would address wage concerns among nurses, how they would find the staff for the sub-acute hospital at the University of Canberra and what they would do to improve funding for nurse practitioners.
