What a story "Doctors criticised over aged home case"

How often does this phrase - "conflict of interest" - arise when aged care hits the news?...

• Brighton Aged Care, then known as St Catherine's, was sanctioned in 2005
• Brighton Aged Care was was sanctioned again in 2007:
• For three or more years, the department made its routine noises and audited the place to death. It put on a "nurse adviser" for six months
  

And despite this lengthy, expensive and time-sapping intervention by the State ... in the end, it was only the courage and integrity of two nurses that brought this latest incident to light.

Nothing could better illustrate that aged care is a job for nurses ... not nurse-entrepeneurs, not quickie-trained tafe graduates ... but real live nurses with experience in their craft (sorry, TAFE graduates, but surely you, too, see the need for nursing expertise).

And nothing could better illustrate the failure of the Australian Aged Care Standards and Accreditation Agency. In a decade, it's one and only success has been to prove beyond doubt that human services cannot be run on statistics alone.

The new Minister has made an encouraging response to the Brighton Aged Care incident. But now let's see someone address the self-serving, mutually-massaging labyrinth of conflicted interests within the 'system'.

Author: Anonymous