Paul Fletcher (Bradfield, Liberal Party, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Communications) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I am very pleased to rise to mention some significant developments at a very major institution within my electorate, the Sydney Adventist Hospital, fondly known as the 'San'. The San is an extremely impressive operation. It is a private hospital and does tremendous work. It has well over 400 beds, 2,300 staff, 500 volunteers and 900 accredited medical practitioners and had more than 53,000 inpatients and 180,000 outpatients last year. The San has just been through a very substantial upgrade, a $200 million redevelopment, that includes the new Maternity, Women's Health and Children's Unit and an integrated cancer centre and healing garden, and there is capacity for up to an extra 200 hospital beds and 12 operating theatres.

Unusually, for a private hospital, the San has an emergency room. It is also a teaching hospital for the Sydney University Medical School. The teaching facilities, under the guidance of Professor John Watson, are extremely impressive. I was there at the hospital and the teaching facilities just a couple of weeks ago watching medical students experiencing a simulation in a room full of technology. There was a very life-like dummy and situations were being simulated that put them under considerable pressure—as they reflected on in the debrief session afterwards which I sat in on.

The San has, for any years, been led by a very distinguished doctor and medical administrator, Dr Leon Clark. He has only just retired. He served for over 20 years. It was a time of tremendous change and growth at the San but it continued its remarkable longstanding tradition of serving the people of not just Northern Sydney but also other areas around Australia. Given the San's specialisation, patients often come from other parts of Australia and, indeed, other parts of the world.

I also want to acknowledge Phil Currie, who was recently appointed as the new chief executive. Phil is a longstanding medical administer at the San, having served as deputy chief executive for many years. As much as his predecessor, Dr Leon Clark, had a medical background, Phil comes from the operational side of the business, having been a nurse and Director of Nursing Services at one point. So the San has been in good hands for many years. I pay tribute to the tremendous work that Dr Leon Clark did leading the San. I congratulate Phil Currie as the new chief executive and I congratulate all who work at the San for their service to our community.