"Outpatient clinic and emergency care differences"

I have been under the care of Hedland’s Outpatient Clinic for the last few weeks.

The month previous to this, my young son also had an appointment there, with a happy, well-tended little boy bouncing out of the clinic. 

After needing to advocate for both my children’s and my own care within the ED side of the hospital, multiple visits, x-rays, ultrasounds and differing Doctors' opinions, finally, the RPH trauma clinic had me travel immediately to Perth for surgery. 

Being asked as a preference, by RPH, to stay in Perth for 8 weeks due to my ongoing treatment, I took the chance of coming home and seeing if I could recover here with the help of the Outpatient Clinic. I am very pleased to say our experience with the Outpatient clinic, so far, has exceeded all of my expectations. All staff are friendly and go above and beyond within their separate roles and teams to create what we have experienced is a happy, helpful, and productive clinic. They have liaised with me, RPH and within their own teams to ensure my recovery can be kept here at home, as pain-free as possible. They have listened to my concerns and addressed any questions or concerns I may have. I have become an “out of the normal recovery” type patient, due to no one's fault. 

This I feel has allowed my experience with  the Outpatient team and RPH collaborating, to be insightful, comforting and that my voice is being heard. Both teams have been doing all they can to ensure I can continue to be here, whilst significantly reducing my pain and leading me back onto a good recovery path. 

I have found the receptionists and triage nurses from both the clinic and ED to be very friendly, efficient, quick check in/out and I am yet to have any form of a significant wait time. A special mention to the plastics PH telehealth team, Occupational Therapy team and the nursing staff who have been tending to my injury. Without them working together, my recovery would not be back on track, I’d still be in immense pain and most likely on my way back to Perth.

 

After 3 weeks of no sleep, increasing pain and swelling, I was scheduled in straight away, saw the collaborative manner to which my new ad-hoc splint was made and had a wonderful 1st pain free sleep in nearly a month! 

Thank you to all the Outpatient staff for your continued care, dedication to each patient, and the creativity needed when working regionally. Especially due to the limited access, supplies and options that come from being out of Perth. 

Also a thank you to the staff who come to work at the clinic for a month or so at a time, filling in the staff shortage but ensuring they answer any questions, even if they need to query a request, my experience has been they follow it up and inform me, prior to any follow up needed from myself. 

It would be amazing to see more positive outcomes, patient satisfaction, speciality care and the decrease of  extra patients required to travel to Perth for treatment. Significantly reducing the expense, patient load, whilst possibly elliviating the overloading on other departmental programs such as PATS, in Hedland. 

This might be somewhat achievable with more funding, the supplying of more up to date patient required resources, specialised or even general equipment and utilities. This availability being for both patients and staff to utilise so they can work towards a quicker, more successful recovery or treatment plans collaboratively. 

Alongside a highly needed, significant revision and improvement in the diagnostic abilities from the Emergency Department Doctors, radiological technicians and diagnostic report writers. I do feel patient satisfaction and correct diagnosis’ would significantly increase and the Doctors would feel more comfortable and confident to make the correct assessment, instead of “waiting for Perth”.

To date our misdiagnosed fractures, dislocations, and potential bone growth damages have seen us visit ED on seven different occasions, only when Perth teams step in is there anything wrong other than “soft tissue damage”, even with myself advocating for my children and myself, being treated as if I don't know what I'm talking about. 

Only when a Perth team called me, mid ED assessment, did I suddenly feel listened to and then treated with respect. I as an untrained individual could seemingly see on our imaging things were not right. 

Just before my phone rang, a qualified Dr, with Hedland technicians reports written stating nothing is wrong, also overriding and convincing the Dr from the day before, who had already, thankfully sent my images to Perth, trying to force me to see there was “nothing wrong”. 

I burst into tears when Perth called due to the relief someone had seen my images and knew what was happening. 

This has impacted my trust in any future visits to the emergency and radiological side of the hospital. Questioning how so many trained professionals, from different areas, could misdiagnose wrongly, on a number of occasions? 

The vast comparison between the initial  diagnositics and Outpatient treatment is significant, but I am grateful for the clinic and all of the different teams and staff that are creating a new sense or ease for us. They have gone above and beyond, restoring my trust, faith and belief that I can be here for a successful recovery. 

Thank you for all of your daily hard work 🙂