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Lack of treatment for my parent.

Posted By castorjg34

"Lack of treatment for my parent."

About: Fiona Stanley Hospital

(as a relative),

My elderly parent was recently brought by Royal Flying Doctors Service (RHDS) from a rural hospital with what the doctors described as an urgent matter. It is now a week later and we have been advised that my parent is not going to be operated on because they are not as important. The doctor who visited  suggested we would be better transferring to a private hospital the following day to get the surgery completed. My parent fasted for two days only to be told by the nurses that my parent had been - bumped - by the surgeons.

I had thought that there was a commitment to first do no harm. My parent is in worse shape than when they got on the RFDS plane. My parent has lost significant weight and is struggling emotionally. Please do not worry about responding to this, save your effort to respond to the ministerial inquiry.

Given the experience to date and the advice from the doctor we will see how the private hospital compares in relation to care. 

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Responses

Response from Neil Doverty, Executive Director Fiona Stanley and Fremantle Hospitals Group, South Metropolitan Health Service 5 years ago
Neil Doverty
Executive Director Fiona Stanley and Fremantle Hospitals Group,
South Metropolitan Health Service

Submitted on 21/02/2019 at 10:48 AM
Published on Care Opinion at 11:29 AM

picture of Neil Doverty

Dear castorjg34,

Thank you for taking the time to send us feedback regarding the care of your elderly parent at Fiona Stanley Hospital.

I appreciate your family’s frustrations at the delay in surgery. There are a range of factors that need to be assessed and optimised to ensure a person is ready for surgery to proceed safely, which can take some time. This includes ensuring all appropriate investigations are completed and reviewed, and that other issues such as medication use, are optimised for surgery. Surgery will not be scheduled until these factors are in place. Fiona Stanley Hospital do have large capacity for conducting emergency surgery, with 230 emergency operations occurring in the week that your parent was an in-patient.

Please accept my sincere apologies for any miscommunication regarding your parent’s work up and plans for heart surgery or explanation of the reasons between their arrival at FSH and their operation date. Your story has been fed back to the staff involved. Clear communication is such an important cornerstone of health care and I was disappointed to hear that that this was not your parent’s experience on this occasion.

I encourage you to contact our Patient and Family Liaison Officer via phone 6152 4013 or email FSHFeedback@health.wa.gov.au so that we can better understand the issues that your parent experienced and help us to continue to improve our care by addressing these issues with the relevant staff.

I look forward to hearing from you and thank you again for raising your concerns.

Kind regards

Neil Doverty

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