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A negative experience at the Emergency Department

Posted By trapperpf63

"A negative experience at the Emergency Department"

About: Geraldton Hospital / Emergency Department

(as the patient),

Last year I presented at the Emergency Department to get a letter outlining the medication I take for an overseas flight. This was due to my doctor being on leave, this leave occurred before I was able to get the letter from them.

I knew my issue wasn’t an emergency so I was happy to wait until I was seen. 4 hours later, I approached the triage nurse to get a better idea of how much longer it could possibly take, thankfully it was as the Nurse said and I was seen a short time later.

The doctor who saw me upset me and I started to have a panic and anxiety attack cause they asked questions about why I was presenting, and I felt they basically made me feel anxious and stressed out.

I spoke to the doctor out of sheer frustration and let them know how they had made me feel. They then offered another doctor and I said yes, they then said well you will be waiting another few hours and because of how I’d been made to feel I told them I did not care. I’d be happy to wait.

There are other aspects to this incident but ultimately my reason for going to the ED was, in my opinion, made to feel unnecessary. I felt belittled and made to feel like I was not wanted there and had no need to go there😟

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Responses

Response from Michele Young, REOC Lead, Executive Services, WACHS-Midwest 4 years ago
Michele Young
REOC Lead, Executive Services,
WACHS-Midwest

Submitted on 4/02/2020 at 6:42 PM
Published on Care Opinion on 5/02/2020 at 9:57 AM

picture of Michele Young

Dear trapperpf63,

Thank you for getting in touch and sharing your health care experience. I was disappointed to read about the aspects of your care that you described and I am very sorry that you experienced our service in this way as it does not meet the standards that we strive for.

Learning from experiences like yours is an important part of continuous improvement for our service and we would really love the opportunity to speak with you to see what we can do better and where we can improve. I have discussed your concerns with both the Geraldton Hospital Operations Manager and the Medical Director Geraldton Hospital who would welcome the opportunity to discuss your experience in greater detail. We would like to follow this up directly with the staff involved in your care so that we can understand what occurred. We would be very grateful if you could please contact us directly to discuss the issues you have raised. Derek Fraser, Operations Manager, Geraldton Hospital can be contacted on 9956 2369 or 0409 045 153 or Dr Katy Templeman, Director Medical Services, Geraldton Hospital can be contacted on 9956 2410 or 0429 556 146 or alternatively you can contact myself on 9956 8695 or michele.young@health.wa.gov.au. Your call would be very welcome and can still be addressed anonymously if you wish.

Thanks again for getting in touch, we really appreciate your feedback, without it, we would not be aware of issues like this happening and would not have the opportunity to improve our service. I look forward to hearing from you very soon.

Kind regards

Michele

Coordinator Executive Services

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Update posted by trapperpf63 (the patient)

Hi Michele,

Thankyou for your response I would be very happy to talk about this matter and find outhow we could work towards a positive outcome

your sincerely

Trapperpf63

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