Western Sydney is an amazing place with truly remarkable people providing health care.

WSLHD – ANNUAL PUBLIC MEETING – 2015

WESTERN SYDNEY – AMAZING PLACE!

Stephen Leeder

Chair of the WSLHD Board

I add my acknowledgment to those already expressed of the original custodians of the land and their elders past and present and I welcome people who identify as Aboriginal people here today.

If western Sydney issued its own number plates, what might be the motto?  South Australia has The Festival State.

 

But look where that led.  The grand prix used to be held in Adelaide but was moved to Melbourne because in Adelaide the drivers kept falling asleep.

No risk of that here!  The growth of western Sydney is amazing!  The increase in population is amazing!  The diversity of our population is amazing – so many cultures to guide us and enrich our life if we open to them and embrace difference!  The bonds among our citizens to one another area amazing as we see in our hospitals and schools and sporting organisations, in social clubs and religious groups! So how about Western Sydney: Amazing Place!?

 
 


Just look around – this amazing building that enables Western Sydney University to train doctors and nurses was not here a decade ago.  The new hospital building is amazing.  Mt Druitt is changing and developing rehabilitation services in amazing ways. The Millennium Research Institute’s new building at Westmead won the Sulman prize for architecture this year.  Pretty amazing!  Auburn Hospital and its community services have developed amazingly with the stimulus of the University of Notre Dame Australia.  Community health services are adapting to the needs of people with chronic problems to provide care and support.  The development of the Primary Health Network, building on years of work with our general practitioners and WentWest, has been critically important and amazing. 

Our biggest challenge at Westmead is to ensure that the hundreds of millions of dollars invested in the upcoming Westmead Precinct inspire our services to match their efforts to the health needs of western Sydney in ten to 20 years’ time. 

We have had amazing support from our state politicians, especially Premier Mike Baird and Minister Jillian Skinner. We have enjoyed steady backing from our local politicians – federal, state and local government – as well.  We now also have a federal minister for health and a prime minister committed to innovation and growth.  The ministry of health headquarters at North Sydney, especially Health Infrastructure, have been a huge help on this campus, Mt Druitt and at Westmead as has the secretary, Dr Mary Foley.

None of this would have been possible without the leadership from Danny O’Connor and his amazing executive team.

Now all of these amazing things will help make western Sydney an Australian leader in health care.  I’m also happy that we are helping the Australian economy to grow.  I hope Mr Turnbull notices! 

As you can’t improve productivity without bright new ideas about better ways of doing things, so research and education, which is where these ideas often originate, are critical.  We invest in both alongside clinical care.  We are members of a new partnership with Children’s Hospital, our research institutes, the local health districts of Sydney and North Sydney and the University of Sydney to ensure that what comes out of research is rapidly applied to clinical problems and that the research agenda makes sense to clinicians and the community.

Sometimes we’re told that we are a huge cost, but we could say that in fact we are a really big investment. Think of the thousands of jobs we create. We are already amazingly productive, especially when you see how we apply new technologies and perform so much additional work each year at a highly efficient price.

But our primary function is to care for people in need and to find practical and feasible ways to assist our citizens to experience the best possible health. This requires us to take hold of the hands of other social agencies such as education, community services, transport, and planning to advocate for better and safer environments, more walkways and parks in our suburbs, more community interaction, fewer liquor outlets and easier access to fresh food.  No other way exists to deal definitively with the massive problem of diabetes.

We have the motivation – it is one of our most impressive qualities – and it never ceases to amaze me how dedicated and committed our staff is to our central purpose of helping people who are sick and searching for preventive opportunities. 

Yes, we have challenges.  We have a long way to go in meeting the mental health needs of our population. Recent turmoil at our Aboriginal Medical Service needs steady hands, cool minds, compassionate hearts and deep involvement from our Aboriginal community to set straight. We are working on bringing together all the care needed by people with multiple chronic illnesses.

We are humans, not robots or automatons, and so we make mistakes – occasionally devastating – through ignorance or insensitivity or inattention or overload or prejudice. These mistakes damage our patients and our staff.  As a healing, caring organisation we do two things in relation to those mistakes. First, to those we have hurt we seek to offer support and our apology.  Second, then we set about to learn from our mistakes.  We seek constantly to improve the quality and safety of our organisation. Our quality awards recognise people in our organisation who have excelled in this pursuit.  

Although torn by events such as the recent Friday shooting in Parramatta and the persistent problems that lie beneath the surface of that event, there is much about the steady, humane concern of our district that heartens us.  This is Carers’ Week throughout Australia.  Think of all the care given by families and individuals in our community to the thousands of people with disabling chronic illness and frail older people and young people with disabilities.  As I found in a research study in which we interviewed people with chronic illness in western Sydney, family, neighbours and friends provide most of the care and support these people receive. 

Take the response of our community to the possibility that additional refugees from Syria may soon be offered a home with us.  Think of the community groups Professor Zelas has identified that have quietly set about planning how they will help and what they will provide for these weary people.  Western Sydney – amazing place?  It can also be a place of amazing grace.

There are many items on our agenda for the coming year.  With so much on we can easily lose sight of our central function – helping those who are sick to get back to the maximum level of health within their limits and helping shape the environment so that is easier for all our citizens to make healthy choices.

Today I am speaking on behalf of your board.  We are all immensely proud of our workforce – managers, maintenance crews, volunteers, medical, and nursing, research, education and support staff.  We admire your commitment, your humanity, your proficiency, your professional investment in making our district such an amazing place.  The board knows also how much we depend on the support of this fabulous community.  In turn, we want to support you as best we can. 

So on behalf of your board I say thank you for all you do with us, for us and for the community of this amazing place called western Sydney.