Dan Andrews hits out at journalist after back injury care in Victoria is brought up
Dan Andrews has lectured a reporter who mentioned a patient with a back injury, using his experience of the same injury to defend the standard of his state’s hospital care.
The journalist questioned the Victorian Premier why patient who suffered a cracked vertebrae had to be moved by stretcher across Box Hill Hospital carpark.
Mr Andrews was facing a grilling amid escalating complaints about Victoria’s under-pressure hospital system due to bed and staff shortages when he become defensive.
The Premier, 50, fractured his T7 vertebrae and cracked five ribs during a horror fall at a Mornington Peninsula holiday home in Sorrento on March 9 last year. His lung also partially collapsed.
He admitted slipping on wet stairs which saw him rushed to intensive care at The Alfred hospital.
Dan Andrews lectured a reporter who mentioned a patient with a back injury, using his experience of the same injury to defend the standard of his state’s hospital care
Mr Andrews was hospitalised on March 9, 2021 and spent 10 days in hospital after suffering the horrific fall at a Sorrento holiday house. He returned to the state’s top job after 111 days recovering
A new report found over two-thirds of patients at a major Melbourne hospital, Monash Medical Centre in Clayton, were not treated inside the recommended time period.
Mr Andrews, who took 111 days off work after his fall at his holiday home last March, appeared triggered by the report’s question and snapped back.
He barked that there was ‘nothing comfortable’ about breaking one’s back, which he stressed was ‘very serious’ injury.
Dan Andrews pictured with his teenage daughter Grace on April 18 – one of few photos of Mr Andrews during his recovery
‘I can confirm that from personal experience and nothing about that sort of an injury is easy and sometimes there are challenges, but the staff do the best they can to provide the best care to those patients and all patients,’ Mr Andrews said.
He said his injury meant he knew Victoria’s doctors and nurses ‘do their very best, their very, very best’ to treat patients.
The injury, which left him unable to breathe or call for help, was so bad his wife Catherine feared he might die.
Instead it saw him benched from Victoria’s top job for three and a half months and led to a long recovery.
Mr Andrews, 50, fractured his T7 vertebrae and cracked five ribs during a horror fall at a Mornington Peninsula holiday home on March 9 last year and was rushed to The Alfred hospital
Some commentators have speculated Mr Andrews’ occasional temper could be caused by back soreness.
”As I put my foot on to the first step. I knew I was in trouble. I didn’t really connect with the step it just slid straight off, I became airborne almost,’ he said at the time.
‘Then all I can hear is just this almighty crunch.
‘When I heard the crunch, I knew. I thought this is serious, we’re in trouble here.’
