"My mother’s care"

I can name many instances of negligent and abusive behaviour directed towards my mother while she was in the FO ward at the Mackay Base Hospital recently. The initial reason for her admittance into the hospital was for AF (atrial fibrillation), feeling sick in the stomach, and for severe panic attacks she was experiencing. She had previously suffered a stroke prior to this and as a result lost 50% of her sight and some of her balance.

1. I witnessed my mother roughly shoved onto a commode when she had to relieve herself. She cried out in pain, to which the nurse did not respond. I later saw two places on the back of my mother’s legs where the commode had pinched her and drawn blood.

2. I saw that my mother’s call signal cord had been pulled out of the wall two mornings in a row - had obviously been done by the night staff. This is alarming when one considers my mother is a diabetic and is prone to hypos (hypoglycaemia) in the night. She later told me that she had, in fact, had a hypo through the night and had been unable to call for help. She reported she had to get the lady in the next bed to call for a nurse.

3. One morning I arrived to visit my mother and was told that she had slipped out of her chair through the night and landed on her bottom. This was one of the nights that the call signal cord had been removed from the wall. I was told that a doctor had examined her, but she insists that did not happen.

4. When I went to visit her one evening, her hands, feet, nightie, tray and the floor around her was covered in dried blood. She told me it was from when a doctor was trying to put a cannula into her hand. I cleaned her hands and feet and wiped down the floor and her eating tray.

5. At 2am the next morning, I was called by one of the nursing staff to be informed that my mother had another fall, this time in the Rec Lounge. The brakes had not been applied to the Recliner she was attempting to sit in, and it shifted from under her which caused her to land on her tailbone and hit the back of her head on the floor.

I was told she was fine, that she had had a CT Scan and had been examined by a doctor and she had been moved to Room 12 where she would have someone watching her and another patient. Her account is different:

Mum claims the fall occurred at about 10pm. She agrees she was taken to have a CT Scan, and was examined by a doctor. She told me she had complained to the doctor about how she had been treated. After the examination my mother claims she was taken to what she described as a dungeon where she was confined to a bed. The nurse in charge of her denied her repeated requests to have a glass of water and I believe spoke to her very disrespectfully. My mother claims this nurse also roughly raised the bed guard and jammed her legs in between the rail and the mattress - causing her pain. This nurse was later replaced by another nurse who was also rude to her.

6. Her nightie had not been changed for three days, despite there being clean nighties available. As I mentioned earlier, her nightie was covered in dried blood, and to be honest it stank.

7. Despite my mother’s obvious instability and the threat of possible concussion she was discharged early afternoon following this fall.