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"COVID-19 testing"

About: Wonthaggi Hospital

(as a parent/guardian),

Recently all of the COVID-19 testing places were booked out. I rang and spoke to the hospital and they advised they were doing testing after 1pm. I arrived at 1pm with my child to have them tested because they had previously had a fever and was still coughing and had a runny nose. When we first entered the hospital I had to give all of our details to a nurse at the door including medicare details. They also took our temperatures.

We were given adult face masks so it didn't fit my child and then taken to a corridor where we joined a line of seats. No one advised us of when testing would be starting or how long the wait would be or anything.

I believe there were no toilets nearby.

No one spoke to any of the people waiting for, I believe, 2 hours. We were in a corridor which had a lot of foot traffic and people would walk passed right up next to the opposite wall to try and keep the 1. 5m distance.

Finally, after 2 hours they started testing. Once a person had left their chair I believe the chairs weren't cleaned and the next person sat down on the chair.

I understand this is a new thing for everyone but having a young child waiting for 2 hours without someone even talking to you is terrible service in my opinion. Everyone waiting were talking to each other and I believe, complaining about the pre set up and service provided.

After we finally got to see someone if was a nurse who I felt didn't seem confident in taking the swap. They also only had adult swabs. Very hard to use an adult swab on a child in my opinion, when it has to go up their small nose!

I believe it's no wonder not many people are getting tested when they have to put up with this poor service and customer service.

Very disappointed in my opinion.

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Responses

Response from Jan Child, CEO, Bass Coast Health 3 years ago
We have made a change
Jan Child
CEO,
Bass Coast Health
Submitted on 19/06/2020 at 5:30 PM
Published on Care Opinion on 22/06/2020 at 10:15 AM


picture of Jan Child

Dear julywk69,

Firstly, please accept my apologies for the delay in responding to you, and most importantly, I hope you will also accept my sincerest apologies for your experience.

It has taken us some time to talk to the people involved to find out what happened, but in summary, I agree that it was a poor experience and not in keeping with our expectations. It seems our usual process was not handed over to new staff, and not implemented as it should have been, which caused unnecessary delays in us seeing people. It also meant that requirements such as communication and cleaning were not as they should have been.

We have had a strong intent to be very swift and very tight in implementing our testing processes and we didn't do well on this day, including in facilitating a better Paediatric response.

Our Operations Director, Clinical Director and Nurse Unit Managers have each looked at the details of this day and have put in place a number of measures which should make sure this doesn't happen again. I am grateful for your feedback and very appreciative that you took the time to let us know.

I would be very happy to talk to you directly if you wish (my number is 0472846355) but please accept this post with my sincere apologies. I am able to reassure you that we have learnt from this.

Kind Regards,

Jan

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