WA Health Misconduct Handling Procedures - Corruption and Crime ...

subsequent review at WACHS-Kimberley from December 2007 to April2008 were almost identical (see Section 2.3).[35] In both cases recommendations by the Commission were accepted by theDepartment, which added that the issues needed to be addressed on a“whole-of-Health” basis.[36] In that context, a review at RPH from January 2009 to July 2009 (seeSection 2.5), which started 12 months after the PMH review wascompleted, found that recommendations made by the Commission andaccepted by the Department in relation to misconduct risks associatedwith Schedule 8 and Schedule 4 drugs had resulted in some positivepractical change. But the general position articulated in the reviews ofPMH and WACHS-Kimberley was almost identical at RPH. For example:(1) managers’ understanding of and approach to managingmisconduct was limited and varied;(2) executives were unclear on what behaviours constitutemisconduct;(3) except for the control of Schedule 8 and Schedule 4 drugs, andsecurity of patient data, a formal misconduct risk identificationprocess had not been undertaken;(4) some information from the Department about misconduct wasbeing received by the RPH executive (for example, the need toreport misconduct and some focus on drugs management), but themessages were inconsistent and there was no strategic messagebeing delivered about developing a misconduct managementmechanism within WA Health; and(5) Similarly, confidence in how misconduct was managed at RPHvaried across the executive group, from those who were certainmisconduct was managed well, to those who thought it was notmanaged at all.1.7 Why is this the Case?[37] The misconduct management problems in WA Health stem from thedisconnection between a stated desire to resolve its problems on the onehand, and the translation of that desire into a practical solution on theother (notwithstanding the work undertaken by WA Health during theperiod of the review). There are arguably many reasons for this, asdetailed below.(1) Size: WA Health is enormous. It has over 37,000 employees, anannual budget of around $4 billion, and workplaces in all parts ofthe State, ranging from remote nursing posts with a staff of one, tometropolitan teaching hospitals with thousands of employees andvolunteers. Therefore, the size of the task should not beunderestimated.10