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"A gap in care"

About: Royal Perth Hospital

(as a relative),

Recently my mother was cared for by an agency nurse who worked from 7am to 1pm. The next agency nurse commenced work at 3pm. My mother had no-one to care for her between 1pm and 3pm.

She was in a single room with the door closed, my mum was monitored with a portable ECG machine, to monitor her heart rate, respiratory rate, and oxygen saturation. She was extremely short of breath and on high flow nasal prongs 10L of oxygen with a flow rate of 45L/minute.

Mum pushed her nurse call bell and it took a nurse 25 minutes to answer the bell. When mum complained she was told - put in a complaint. Mum needed to go to the toilet, but was unable to move due to the amount of monitoring she was connected to.

I am very concerned that it would take so long to answer my mum's call bell. Also, with the door closed there was no chance that the alarms on the monitor could be heard. I consider this was an extremely unsafe environment for my mother to be cared in.

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Responses

Response from Aresh Anwar, Executive Director, Royal Perth Bentley Group 7 years ago
Aresh Anwar
Executive Director,
Royal Perth Bentley Group

I am a doctor and my job at Royal Perth and Bentley Hospitals is to help co-ordinate all the elements of the hospital to ensure patients get the best clinical outcomes and experience

Submitted on 5/09/2017 at 6:01 PM
Published on Care Opinion on 6/09/2017 at 9:29 AM


picture of Aresh Anwar

Dear elvis,

Thank you for taking the time to write. I would like to apologise and acknowledge that the care you describe is clearly unacceptable.

We are currently implementing care rounds to reduce the need for the call bell as a means of alerting staff to patients needing support and help. Despite this it is clear we have fallen significantly short. We take issues of patient safety and care extremely seriously. It is obviously critical that we identify areas which may need more support and would be grateful if you would please consider contacting me confidentially on 9224 2219 so that I address the issues you have raised. I am happy to meet privately.

In the meantime I have contacted our ward managers to alert them to your concerns and ask that they review their wards

Many thanks for considering contacting me.

Kind regards

Dr Aresh Anwar

Executive Director

Royal Perth Bentley Group

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