"Experience in admissions, as an inpatient and with one clinician"

I was recently in the Sydney Eye Hospital Hand Clinic for surgery on my hand following an infected cat bite.

Experience in admissions:

At the beginning of the process where you get admitted for your surgery, there was an admissions clerk, who was so rude to me. When I was there doing the admission forms all the patients are sitting in a waiting room, and I could see they all had the same surgeon, they all had the same folder and same surgeon’s name on it. I am covered by private health, and I recall the clerk said to me “you’re covered with private health” and I said “Yes, but, unless if I’m going to get a different surgeon or private room I don’t see the point of using private health”. They said I would need to speak to this lady over the phone, I spoke to her and she was lovely. I still didn’t feel confident in going with private so I decided to go public, and not use my private health. The admissions clerk then grabbed the green folder, made me sign a new form, and snapped it closed and I recall they said ‘I’m going to make sure that you get a junior surgeon for your surgery'. It was really nasty, and I think it was because I was not doing what they wanted – which was to use my private insurance.

My stay in the ward:

Regarding my stay in the ward; it was really disgusting. Myself and others were subjected to a person that was – well with the curtain situation you know what everyone is on, and they were on a substitute for methadone. Everybody deserves treatment – but I believe this person was clearly a homeless person and had like 25 Woolworths shopping bags and constantly got more delivered. 

The first few days they were relatively quiet. They went missing a lot, then when the patient next to me was discharged, this patient skyrocketed. I don’t know enough about drugs to know what happened, but they would go out (and they told the nurse they went out and injected) and it made their behaviour erratic. They were showering at midnight, clinking and clunking about, and the nurses had no control over them.

The new patient next to me was elderly, had failed cataract surgery so they were blind, pretty deaf and didn’t speak English. Their adult child came in the next day and spoke to me because they said their parent was really scared.

The patient has diabetes and they wouldn’t eat the provided dinner but would eat mars bars and their blood glucose level was at 25 so the nurses would have to give them insulin.

Then they started disappearing for longer amounts of time, clunking around at midnight, swearing and loud music. It would go on from 11pm – 5am, I went and complained to the nurse unit manager, and asked why this patient wasn’t being treated in outpatients. The other two elderly patients in my room were really sick. Initially I was frightened for my safety. I couldn’t use the bathroom because this patient was incontinent, and they would go in there and make a mess. I didn’t have a shower the 6 days I was in there, because if the other patients used the bathroom they would start banging on the door and become aggressive. My complaint isn’t about them getting medical care, I just don’t understand why someone who wasn’t on an IV wasn’t being treated as an outpatient. I believe they should have been moved.

Before my discharge I was moved with another patient to another room. The elderly patient who didn’t speak English was discharged.

After my discharge I asked the nurse on the ward, who did my check up, what happened to the patient and they said this patient been moved to another hospital. I don’t really know what the answer is but I felt the nurses were powerless to do anything. This patient was out of the room more than they were in the room. The process seemed not right to me that this patient wasn’t just discharged and sent through outpatients. I just feel that it wasn’t handled very well. I think it probably would have just been the same result on a different floor. There were other users that were coming and visiting and congregating in this patient's room. My issue isn’t them and their medical problems, but that they weren't controllable, discharged or moved. I think security was called once, because the patient would rant and rave during the night. I am very disappointed that seemingly no one had the power to make them leave.

One bad nursing experience:

I had my first surgery on the early in the week, and my second surgery a few days later. After the first surgery I also had a bad experience with a nurse, who I felt was very abrupt and not caring. I believe you are gonna get that one nurse wherever you go. Everyone else hooked me up to an automated drip. This nurse brought in one that is meant to be administered in 45 minutes slowly, but they manually used a syringe, they did in 2 minutes, they pushed it through but it blew my vein. Before my second surgery the anaesthetist questioned “what happened here” and tapped my blown out vein, and it was sorer than my actual wound site from surgery. I questioned the nurse about it. It’s still sore to this day, weeks later. I will say that all of the other nurses on the hand clinic were fabulous.