Recently I visited a friend in the surgical ward of Maitland Hospital. During the visit a very apologetic nurse came and asked if it would be okay for my friend to be removed from the surgical ward and placed in the pedeatric ward as there was urgent patients waiting in ambulances downstairs in need of surgical beds.

This had also happened the day before when several patients from surgical had been moved to other wards to make room for more urgent cases.

How unsettling this must be for these patients, being in hospital is bad enough without having to play musical beds because of gross shortages that have been apparent for many, many years.

This cannot be right. Maitland has long been short of beds, man power and professional services only to be made many, many times worse when all our new subdivisions are up and running and residents are in need of hospital or medical care.

Infrastructure should be the first and foremost priority not as it seems to be to me now – infrastructure will either look after itself or we’ll deal with it at a later date when problems arise. Not good enough.

Note: the time is now, more for thought and less developer greed.