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Care Opinion

Public health waiting list

Posted By Fearful

"Public health waiting list"

About: Royal Melbourne Hospital

(as a friend),

My friend's journey has been nothing but horrific!

Through their time as a patient at the RMH for several years, I believe my friend has been simply forgotten and missed off the list, with no explanation of how it happened.

I believe appointments after surgery were never made which resulted in staples being left way too long.

I felt the registrars from the surgical team were rude and unsympathetic.

One of the surgeons has been brilliant and the only positive thing about this whole journey, in my opinion.

The last surgery happened recently. Prior to this, the patient was under this surgeon and at the top of the list for their surgery. The surgeon left for unknown reasons and then without explanation, an appointment that was supposed to be with that surgeon was with an arrogant registrar that simply said, well the other surgeon has gone now and you start the process again under a different surgeon. There was no 'we are sorry this has happened' or 'we can understand how difficult this is', just a bad attitude with no sympathy in my opinion.

I feel so frustrated seeing people treated this way.

Then the process of appointments started again under this new surgeon.

Then we received a call to say the first surgeon is back and the new one will no longer do your surgery so you start again with that surgeon! This call was from someone who, in my opinion, was by the book, delivered the message with absolutely no consideration of the patient's mental health and well-being! It was beyond belief that this had happened and they just expect the patient to deal with it.

My friend had spinal fusion surgery and was waiting with excruciating pain and suffering and serious impact on mental health.

So from this call, the patient contacted the first surgeon who managed to fast track and get the operation done, another cancellation in between but that was for a trauma so understandable.

The experience of aftercare surgery this time was poor in my opinion, and the patient was left in agony with no communication on expectations of recovery, it’s just unbelievable! It took a call from me to explain my friend's significant history of mental health for them to get the medication to relieve their pain! I believe the nurses were doing their best but are put in terrible situations in my opinion.

I feel the whole system is in a sorry state and something has to change for the sake of the people relying on it with no other options!

I believe it’s very cruel and inhuman.

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Responses

Response from George Braitberg, Executive Director Strategy, Quality and Improvement, Melbourne Health 4 years ago
George Braitberg
Executive Director Strategy, Quality and Improvement,
Melbourne Health

Submitted on 8/01/2020 at 12:52 PM
Published on Care Opinion at 1:59 PM

picture of George Braitberg

Dear Fearful,

Let me apologise for your friend's experience as you have described it. Melbourne Health strives to lead with kindness and your account does not live up to this value. Without knowing specific information about your friend’s experience I can only provide general comments. I would, however, encourage your friend to contact our consumer liaison team to provide details. Please note, due to consideration of patient privacy and confidentiality, we cannot respond to anyone other than the patient or their appointed representative. Our consumer liaison team can be contacted at consumerliaison@mh.org.au

You have described a number of issues including missed appointments and rudeness. You have also noted that there was some frustration with having to change specialists for a period of time, and poor aftercare experience following surgery.

Our outpatient department handles over 200,000 appointments per year and last year between 98-100% of urgent patients were seen in a clinic within the benchmarked time of 30 days. Appointments are carefully monitored and if there was some problem with your friend’s follow up this would be an unusual exception. However, I do appreciate, when dealing with such a large number of patients, human error may come into play. I certainly regret and apologise if this occurred.

With regard to your comment about changing specialists, occasionally unplanned leave is required and we do our best to cover for this. If the information was delivered in a way that was not patient-centred I again apologise; we expect our staff to be understanding and polite at all times. I do appreciate that you understand that there will be times when elective procedures are postponed. This is part and parcel of being a State trauma hospital.

I cannot comment any further without details but ask that you accept my sincere apology for any distress experienced by your friend and hope that they are on the road to recovery.

Regards,

Prof George Braitberg

Executive Director Strategy Quality and Improvement

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