Mission

The June Long Foundation was established to address the way medical error is handled, undertake research initiatives to make patient safety everyone's priority and provide emotional support to affected families. Its focus is safe, transparent and accountable hospitals.

June Long, in whom this Foundation is so-named, died in 1994 suddenly. There was a two year coronial investigation into how she died. Glaringly revealed at Inquest, and in the Finding of the State Coroner of Victoria, was the failure by the hospital to care for her. The discovery of deceit, breach of trust and the obstruction and obfuscation experienced beyond belief was the impetus to establish such a Foundation. For a hospital to go to such lengths to hide one patient's death was disconcerting but it did not stop there. The hospital did not conduct a formal inquiry and was exposed as perpetrating the deceit and the extraordinary measures it and their legal advisors took to shift the blame and hinder the Coroner's investigation and the family. There was further disappearance of records after the Long family was urged to sue the hospital and clinicians.

However the Long family didn't go down that path. Instead Medical Error Action Group was founded by Lorraine Long to educate other families on how to seek the truth. A significant number of affected families Australia-wide rallied to support its cause.

The Foundation continues to be concerned by the individual experiences of families of both surviving and deceased patients and their involvement has turned into activism for the public good. All the committed families are motivated to help other families cope with the aftermath.

The Foundation provides a forum where families, and those who advocate for them, can share ideas, insights, and incentives for emotional and justice-oriented healing. In addition, specific issues of family trauma, patient safety, health education, public policy and the legal system are dealt with.

Medical error is not just an issue of expenditure of public resources, violation of public statute, medical indemnity and insurance premiums, or even moral principle, although it involves all these things. Iatrogenesis is, ultimately, an issue of human loss made more tragic because it is preventable. Casualties are not just a blurred mass of statistics, quantified and juggled in search of an elusive irreducible minimum. Each iatrogenic death in an Australian hospital is a unique and irreplaceable individual with a name and a family. Each represents far more than a faceless number to his or her family and friends.

The Foundation stands firm in its commitment to all affected patients and families, understanding that coalition building and supportive sharing with all stakeholders is critical if the voice of the family is to be heard. It recognises its fundamental responsibility to give a voice to these people - both to acknowledge the reality of their loss and harm and to bring that reality to a society numbed by statistics and information inertia. Only then can we enlist society to take note that death and harm due to medical error are a very real problem.

'June Sylvia Long was helpful, enthusiastic, versatile, a lovable person; she deplored injustice' wrote The Honourable Sir Hubert Opperman OBE GCSJ 1904-1996 cyclist, politician, diplomat, upon her death on 29 June 1994.

Registration Form

Information Pack