A sexual assault victim was forced to wait nine hours for a forensic medical examination by a doctor at a Queensland hospital. or signup to continue reading The Liberal National Party says it's a damning indictment on the state's health system, while the government says work is underway to fix any failures. An auditor-general report has uncovered at least 49 instances where rape victims waited longer than 10 minutes to see a health professional after presenting at hospital, with the potential for the number to be higher given a lack of data.
In one case, police tried to organise a rape testing kit for a woman at four different hospitals but none were able to perform one for more than 12 hours. Sexual assault victims are meant to undergo an "approved clinical care pathway" within 10 minutes of presenting at a hospital following recommendations made by a 2018-19 auditor-general report and a 2023 directive from the health minister. However, the directive doesn't specify whether patients should undergo a rape kit within 10 minutes.
Auditor-General Rachel Vagg found hospitals across the state had adopted different approaches, with some deeming clinical care as seeing a social worker or a nurse for basic wellbeing checks. Delays continued for rape kit examinations to be performed with one hospital recording an average wait time of three hours between January and March. Ms Vagg identified one case where a patient waited nine hours before a doctor started the required examination due.