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"Patient care during restricted visiting times."

About: Bunbury Hospital

(as a relative),

I feel the delivery of intimate patients' needs should be planned to not coincide with the restricted COVID visiting hours. My spouse drove for 45minutes to see their much elderly parent, arriving half an hour before the morning visiting hours ended. They had a repair of their neck and femur and unfortunately, had a stroke post-operative.

On arrival, the Doctor said to my spouse, good, now that they were there they had enough people to put the urinary catheter back in. At first, my spouse's job was to attempt to keep their parent calm, but during the procedure, they were in so much pain that my spouse was asked to hold their parent's legs apart. At no point was my spouse given the option to not be present for this intimate procedure.

There were two other staff members present (a nurse and another Dr). By the time the procedure was finished the visiting time was also over. My spouse asked if they could stay a little longer as their parent was very distressed, the answer was no. I realise, as a nurse myself, that it is often hard to plan care. I do, however, feel procedures during the daylight visiting hours should be limited to essential for the patient only. My spouse was really distressed by the whole event and did not like leaving their parent while they were still visibly upset.

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Responses

Response from Barry Moroney, Director of Nursing, Wellington, Harvey Hospital, WACHS South West 3 years ago
Barry Moroney
Director of Nursing, Wellington, Harvey Hospital,
WACHS South West

Manage Collie, Donnybrook, and Harvey Hospitals

Submitted on 1/05/2020 at 1:17 PM
Published on Care Opinion at 1:17 PM


Dear quebecnf36 ,

Thank you for taking the time to reach out and share this experience with me. I was very disappointed to read that a number of factors so negatively impacted valuable visiting time for your spouse and their parent.

It is of great concern to me to hear the level of distress experienced by your spouse’s parent during the procedure to reinsert the urinary catheter. Whilst this procedure can cause some discomfort, people should not experience pain as you describe, which sounds very distressing for all involved. It is also unacceptable to hear that your spouse and their parent were not involved in the decision making around participating in the procedure.

I also take your point that where possible, procedures should not impact on visiting hours. It is understandable that your spouse was upset to leave their parent under such circumstances and I sincerely apologise that this happened.

During our upcoming team meeting I will make sure to reiterate to all staff to compassionately consider our individual patients and their circumstances when observing visiting restrictions.

Involving people and their families/carers in healthcare decisions is a priority for WA Country Health Service. I would really appreciate the opportunity to investigate what has happened further, so that we can improve any of our systems that contributed to these oversights and make sure that this doesn’t happen again.

My name is Barry Moroney and I am the Acting Clinical Risk Co-ordinator for Bunbury Hospital. I would appreciate it if you could please call me at your convenience on 9722 1506 or, alternatively, via email at Barry.Moroney@health.wa.gov.au.

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