Public hospital system..A real eye opener

[Ean Austral]

Gday All,
Long story short, the youngest daughter who is now 18 complained late yesterday of not feeling well, and when she started to get pains in the chest and trouble breathing and being sick a few hours later decided not to take any chances and head off to the hospital, its 8.30pm arrive 8.50pm.
Nurse see's our daughter , takes blood pressure etc and decides she isnt having a heart attack so we wait in the waiting room, at this stage there is 3 other people in the waiting room.
Between 9.00pm and midnight we see a stream of people come thru including 3 asylem seekers with their guards, they were ushered thru and not seen again.
A bloke dropped off by the ambo's with blood all over his face and his head bandaged, who was just wheeled over to a corner and was still there when we left at 0130am
Another bloke comes in escorted by 2 cops with cuts all over his face from what looked like a glass attack.
2 blokes who after much abusing of the nurses turned out to be people who had checked themselves out of the hospital a week before and got infections in the same wounds the hospital had fixed or tried to before they checked out.

The nurse's copped an absolute torrent of abuse from people who we more interested in finding their next drink than getting better.

Not sure how the system is expected to improve when you see the total lack of respect shown by "joe public" but all I do know is they certainly dont pay nurse's enough $$ for what I seen last night, which i am sure is repeated every day and night.

Our daughter seems to have a viral infection that is going around, and am glad we took her, but its a real eye opener to see the hospital system in action

Cheers Ean

[Redback]

What ammused me when at the ED, were the amount of halfwits and their partners or children with wounds or sniffles that could have been fixed at home with a bandaid or panadol a complete waste of time and resoarces.

Aaahhh you cut your widdle finger, **** off home and put a bloody bandaid on it

Baz.

[jx2mad]

A few years ago I was taken from work to the local public hospital (Parramatta) with a kidney stone attack. I was doubled over in severe pain. Took well over an hour to see a Dr, and by that time the spasm had passed so he sent me back to work

[FISHGUTS]

Hi Ean,

Good to hear nothing too serious, yeah I remember from a couple of visits back when we lived in Darwin (late 80's early 90's), it was a real eye opener just what the staff have to put up with. Even now (last visit was a few years ago here in Perth) nothing much has changed and you are bang on Redback, no "home remedy" skills like Mum and Grandma have are used in todays society, just go to the hospital ED.

Cheers,

Peter.

[superquag]

Chest pains, always mention pressure... shortness of breath.... sore neck and a general feeling of impending doom.

May have nothing to do with your broken ankle...but it puts you up the queue like nothing else does !

Can only agree... after seeing most of the "clients" at our local public hospital, I will have no shame about playing the above trick if/when needs be. - Got instant service when I had genuine cardiac problems...

Yes, Nurses are worth their weight in Gold.

[Pickles2]

Something should be done about the "Emergency", or as it should, in many many instances be called, the "I'll come here, 'cause if I go to the Docter I'll have to pay" Dept.
But nothing is done about culling the people "using" the system, nor is there any REAL punishment for those, as a previous poster said, who abuse hard working & dedicated medical professionals.
Cheers, Pickles.

[Lotz-A-Landies]

Sounds like a normal day to me!

Both sides of a brawl in beds next to each other, who then want to continue the fight in the ED.

Drug dealers running business from their trolley.

3am Friday night specials. - Blood, booze and vomit!

What gets me is the Eastern Suburbs mothers who demand to be seen immediately irrespective of the condition of their child because it's an emergency -> she has a dinner party tonight and the guests are due to arrive any moment!

Then the others who demand to be given a government paid taxi ride home because its the sabbath and they can't do the work of opening their wallet to pay the fare!

I could go on and on ... ad infinitum ....!

Something should be done about the "Emergency", or as it should, in many many instances be called, the "I'll come here, 'cause if I go to the Docter I'll have to pay" Dept.
But nothing is done about culling the people "using" the system, nor is there any REAL punishment for those, as a previous poster said, who abuse hard working & dedicated medical professionals.
Cheers, Pickles.

You forgot to mention the red and white free taxi co. they used to get to the ED. (the one with red and blue flashing lights and a siren)

As for making them go to the GP, we can't they are citizens and entitled to use the ED under Medicare, the most that can be done is to give them the appropriate triage score and make them wait until their turn in the cat 5 queue comes up. (Most ED waiting rooms actually have 3 different priority queues operating simultaneously, each queue moving at different rates. Funding is based upon benchmarking of time from presentation to being seen by the Doc for each of the 5 different triage categories)

BTW: the ones who arrived in custody (above), would likely not be seen any quicker than any other person presenting. Just that they would have been housed in a secure area of the department. Highly likely for EDs in close proximity to prisons and detention centres.

[weeds]

my father inlaw presented with mild chest pain or might have been after having chest pain and was placed in a que. he was concerned that it might get worse.....

he made himself fall out of his chair onto the floor, he was instantly seen to and turns out he had had a mild heart attack and needed a stint put in

by no means was he blaming the nurses, from the sounds of it they were under the pump dealing with all sorts presenting......

on a side note he works in the medical industry (servicing hospital equipment) and advise us if you think you have something serious or you are getting worse than lay on the floor. i am not saying i agree with this method of jumping the que just handy to know

[Lotz-A-Landies]

my father inlaw presented with mild chest pain or might have been after having chest pain and was placed in a que. he was concerned that it might get worse.....

he made himself fall out of his chair onto the floor, he was instantly seen to and turns out he had had a mild heart attack and needed a stint put in

by no means was he blaming the nurses, from the sounds of it they were under the pump dealing with all sorts presenting......on a side note he works in the medical industry (servicing hospital equipment) and advise us if you think you have something serious or you are getting worse than lay on the floor

Not in my ED you won't, yes you'll get reassessed, but triage nurses are quite expert in assessing true from fake.

Then we have the person who saw the ambulance cases going straight in, so rang an ambulance to the front door, ambulance control rang us up to querie the call. Or the person who was cat 5, going home (close by) and calling the ambulance, arrived back at triage now with an ambulance bill and being given the same Cat 5 and sent back to the waiting room. Their previous place in the queue having lapsed when they left the ED.

[weeds]

Not in my ED you won't, yes you'll get reassessed, but triage nurses are quite expert in assessing true from fake.

Then we have the person who saw the ambulance cases going straight in, so rang an ambulance to the front door, ambulance control rang us up to querie the call. Or the person who was cat 5, going home (close by) and calling the ambulance, arrived back at triage now with an ambulance bill and being given the same Cat 5 and sent back to the waiting room. Their previous place in the queue having lapsed when they left the ED.

good thing he wasn't in you ED than.......

he was concerned about his health and thought he needed reassessing sooner rather than later, maybe he saved himself from more harm i guess we will never know......in the end he was treated straight away, i would have to check but pretty sure he was admitted.

just chatted to the wife, forgot to ask whether he stayed in overnight but he actually works for the privaste hospital ED that he presented at which i thought was quite funny