"My mother's dignity was not kept"

Dear Teddy,

Thank you for sharing your story on Patient Opinion. I am so very sorry - and equally concerned - to read that your mother’s dignity was compromised like this whilst she was receiving care in Eastern Health. This standard of care is not at all acceptable in any situation and is not reflective of the way we provide care in Eastern Health. I will raise these matters with the Chief of Clinical Operations at Angliss Hospital (Mr Ben Kelly) as a priority and ask that this be discussed promptly with the Nurse Managers. I will also ask him to remind staff of the importance of upholding the dignity of patients at all times. We are looking at ways that we can also have “men only” and “women only” rooms right across all of our hospitals but in some of the older wards, this is much harder to do. Newer facilities certainly do provide us with more options as increasingly, we have more single rooms. In the meantime, I am really just so sorry that your mother experienced care like this at Angliss Hospital and I hope that you are reassured that I will make follow-up on this a priority. Thank you again for sharing your story which provides us with a timely opportunity to reflect on where we need to improve.

Many thanks and kind regards, Alan Lilly

Dear Teddy

Just a quick note to let you know that I heard back from Ben Kelly on Friday who confirmed that this had been discussed as a priority with all Nurse Unit Managers at the Angliss Hospital. They understand the significance and importance of the matter and will continue to closely monitor care performance in all areas..

Thanks again for sharing your story, I hope you can see that we are indeed taking this matter very seriously and feeding back information to managers and staff very quickly to prevent a recurrence.

Ben Kelly also advised me that the Nurse Unit Managers have also reviewed and explored all options with regard to "men only" and "women only" rooms too.

kind regards and thanks, Alan Lilly