The doctor who gave two elderly patients up to four times the correct dose of COVID-19 vaccine at the Holy Spirit nursing home in Carseldine, Brisbane, hadn’t completed the required vaccination training.
The doctor was recruited by specialist workforce recruitment agency Healthcare Australia, which the federal government has given the job of recruiting and supplying the extra vaccination workforce.
It’s a huge error to happen just a week into Australia’s vaccination rollout — but it’s not the first mistake made by Healthcare Australia during the pandemic.
An untrained doctor
States and territories are in charge of rolling out the vaccine for the general population, although the federal government is in charge of inoculating residents and workers in aged care and disability accommodation.
Four providers — Aspen Medical, Healthcare Australia, International SOS and Sonic Clinical Services — have the job of organising the workforce. Healthcare Australia are organising staff in NSW and Queensland.
Those administering the vaccine have to complete an online training course provided by the Australian College of Nursing, which takes about three hours. Although Healthcare Australia initially said all health professionals had completed the required training, it later advised Health Minister Greg Hunt that the Brisbane doctor had not.
The doctor completed the training the day after administering the incorrect doses to an 88-year-old man and a 94-year-old woman. The vaccine comes in multi-dose vials, with six doses in each vial. A nurse stepped in after noticing the mistake. It’s not known exactly how much of the vaccine was administered.
The pair are not likely to experience adverse side effects but have been hospitalised as a precaution.
A series of mistakes
Healthcare Australia has also been given the job by states of providing staff for hotel quarantine programs. In April it was slammed after a man with COVID-19 went into a coma after waiting for nine hours to get to hospital in Perth.
The doctor caring for the hotel quarantine guests said she was single-handedly looking after 600 cruise ship patients. She was given two hours’ notice to turn up at the Crown hotels and was the only doctor on site.
“I wasn’t given any guidelines or protocols, procedures — there was no PPE, there was actually nothing,” she said.
“I just turned up to the hotel and it was sort of like, ‘Well what do I do next?’ and they said, ‘Well you go and figure it out.’ “
Her contract was terminated by Healthcare Australia.
WA Health said it had asked Healthcare Australia make changes to its rostered personnel, saying it was “not meeting the expectations of the state”.
In Victoria last month, Healthcare Australia staff lodged complaints with WorkSafe about being forced to move between offices and quarantine hotels. COVID-19 Quarantine Victoria has started building offices to address the complaints and was given a warning notice.
Healthcare Australia and the Department of Health have been approached for comment by Crikey.
As usual, the LNP could not organize the proverbial in a brothel while holding a fistful of Fifty dollar notes.
Good old privatisation, who would have thought that it could go wrong?
This is the problem with Healthcare for profit and not for health outcomes.
Who gave Healthcare Australia permission to jab these people in the first place? Was it their family? Surely the recipients were not capable of consent due to their indifferent faculties. We are all guinea pigs due to the inadequate testing but the elderly are absolutely lambs to the slaughter. There are stories leaking everywhere at the moment of contaminated vaccines, medical mistakes and errors and a massive reluctancy of the public to even be interested. Is is fully understood now by nearly everyone that the vaccine will not and does not prevent covid infection So why do they persist? In other news, Lady Gaga has got her dogs back.
The govt now intends to target the Aboriginal communities with mass vaccination. So there is now two main target areas. Aborigines and the elderly. Big pension cost savings there. Ode to the govt and “Scotty the Vaxxer”. or if you prefer, Scotty the Butcher.
What are you going to say when you find no deaths from vaccines?
Or will facts not trouble you.
It beggars belief that a doctor did not know the vials come in 5 dose bottles. Everybody knew that.
Another fine example of private sector efficiency.