'24/7 wanding searches' of patients in hospital's behavioural assessment unit

Metal detection wands will now be used to search all patients at the Canberra Hospital's Behavioural Assessment Unit (BAU), after a man threatened staff with a knife last month.

Police had taken the 35-year-old to the unit after receiving a report he had breached his psychiatric treatment order.

He was searched by police before arriving at the unit, but he later produced a knife, that had been concealed near his ankle, and threatened staff.

Eight staff members took shelter in a secure staff station for three hours, while police tried to negotiate with the man and eventually deployed a flashbang device to disarm him.

Health Minister Rachel Stephen-Smith today told the Legislative Assembly, that new safety measures had since been put in place.

"After the incident, [Canberra Health Services] immediately implemented 24/7 wanding searches in BAU, even if the patient had been previously searched," Ms Stephen-Smith said.

Police to call ahead for 'complex patients'

Ms Stephen-Smith said Canberra Health Services (CHS) had put an action plan in place in response to the "confronting and distressing" incident.

The plan requires police to call the hospital and notify staff before they bring a "complex patient" in for treatment.

Ms Stephen-Smith said building work would also be done to address "the lack of a rear exit from the staff station out of the BAU".

She said staff had raised the need for an exit "from the station into the main emergency department" before the incident.

The two exits from the secure staff station currently both open into the BAU.

The new safety plan includes resolving radio frequency failures that impacted police communication in building five of the hospital on the day of the incident.

It also includes a review of so-called 'code black' rules to cover weapon-related incidents.

Code black is a security measure that hospital staff activate when de-escalation techniques fail, or there is a threat of verbal or physical violence.

"Unfortunately … we have seen a rise in code blacks across our hospitals in line with the rise in [occupational violence]," Ms Stephen-Smith said.

'Incident was preventable': Opposition

ACT Opposition leader Mark Parton accused the government of "downplaying" the seriousness of the event, which he described as preventable.

"Any attempt to downplay what occurred is not only inaccurate, it's also insulting to the staff who lived through it."

He said the incident could have been avoided if search protocols had been "fail safe", infrastructure design had better accounted for emergency situations, and if staff concerns had been acted on before the crisis.

"We're left with a familiar pattern, warnings raised, reviews commissioned, action taken only once something goes wrong."