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"Hospital ED and misdiagnosis"

About: Nepean Hospital / Emergency Department

(as the patient),

Some Hospital ED staff seemed to waste a lot of time, are very quick to try to get rid of you, and delay/fail to find/treat secondary conditions. The doctor I had didn't handle multiple conditions quickly and once one problem was found seemed to stop looking. I was feeling sick at home and went to the bathroom. While sitting on the toilet with GI symptoms I passed out and fell forward. This resulted in trauma to the forehead and eye while wearing glasses. An ambulance was called and took me to the local Public Hospital ED (1.5hrs before discharge and I arrived at the private hospital a few minutes after 4pm. To add injury to insult, it was many years later that an ENT CT scan showed that the eye socket had previously been fractured and healed in a way that partly blocked the sinus passage (between the eyes) and could not be touched by the ENT. It's very awkward to answer questions be the ENT who first asked "When did you break your nose?" and after the scan "When did you have a car accident?"; when I have no record of any break, a few bumps and falls but no record of a fracture, no car accident that required medical attention. The nose could have had a deviated septum for decades. The fractured eye socket probably happened in the fall described above. I think there is something wrong with the system when the above can happen plus at least three other misdiagnoses (of mine) can occur with delays of sometimes over 20 years. Not everyone will follow the 95% assumed normal cases and you can't know for certain unless someone checks. The hospital patient liaison was contact to provide feedback but: they couldn't identify the date of certain events; didn't have immediate access to all my records to narrow the search; had no clinical understanding so they had no idea what I was talking about, nor the clinical notes; so would blame me or the private hospital for misdiagnosis; generally unhelpful and reluctant to pass on any information because they didn't think there was a problem.

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