Our hospital system is cracking. Doctors know how to fix it but no one will listen

April 12, 2026 — 5:00am

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There are few certainties in life, but this is one: what unfolds in Victoria’s hospital system this week will read like an Oscar-winning script from a medical horror film. It always does.

The sharp end, the area that exposes the entire hospital dysfunction, is the emergency department, where people admitted because of threat to “life or limb” are being wheeled into a medical version of a chaotic street market.

Essentially, it’s happening in secret. Those who see the horror and have ideas to fix it are not allowed to talk about it. They’re gagged.

Staff are being abused and bashed, patients are suffering and probably dying when they need not die, and corridors are at times jammed with beds with sick people getting sicker as they wait up to 24 hours to go to a ward.

Victoria’s auditor-general 11 years ago found health workers faced an “unnecessary and preventable” risk of violence in the workplace. Staff say it’s only escalated.

Recently, a young female psychiatrist was badly bashed by a patient, a senior doctor was bitten several times and a nurse was kneed in the face and had clumps of hair pulled out. Imagine if that was happening to building workers.

It’s common. This system has been disintegrating for years as politicians and administrators seem more worried about political window dressing than solutions.

But senior doctors have now urged whoever wins the state election to launch a staff-led review and re-organisation.

The good news is it can be improved, possibly without mortgaging whatever the government has left to mortgage.

Allan thought she had a deal with hospital workers. They are no longer convinced

The experienced staff who work in this cauldron of human misery have fresh ideas and different strategies which they believe could turn the horror show into a less horrible........

© The Age