In a Perth hospital, I recently had an amputation of my leg after an infection spread seriously. After the surgery, I was transferred to the Geraldton Regional Hospital for rehab work before going home. While in hospital both in Perth and later in Geraldton my mobility was severely restricted to the point where I was regularly being manhandled in the bed and in the shower in a nearly naked state.
Now personally I'm not really bothered by nudity but I do find discomfort in seeing others, even professionals like nurses, who appear to be made uncomfortable by the necessity of dealing with the more intimate levels of contact that this requires.
As a result, I have always tried to lighten the situation with a bit of humour. For the most part, I have found this a good way to ease the tension, particularly when you have to deal with people who are a bit nervous about such things. Anyway, at one stage I was officially told off by a senior clinical staff member for what was considered sexual harassment. My first reaction was "you're kidding right". Anyway, after stewing on this for a few hours I decided that it wasn't worth the argument so I let it go as if that was the end of it.
A few days later one of the student nurses in the ward said to me that they'd been warned about me. At which point I noticed that it seemed to take an inordinately long time to get a response from my call bell, my ward door was almost always being left closed and when it wasn't, I felt the younger nurses who walked past seemed to be glaring at me. I became concerned that this "complaint" was influencing the level of care I was getting while still in the hospital. In the end, I decided not to pursue this any further as I had previously thought it wasn't worth the argument.
Well, moving forward I had gone home and was to have my wound care, such as it was, seen to by the Hospital's Post-Acute Care unit - a service they had provided in the past to me in the form of home care in dealing with dressings, medications and the like. I was initially advised that there was a shortage of staff and they were unable to make the house call.
Being less than ideally mobile I made arrangements with one of my home service carers, who was also a qualified nurse, to deal with the dressing requirements. I contacted the clinic to advise them of this and in the course of the conversation found out that the reason they wouldn't call on me at home was there was a note placed in my hospital file that I was considered an aggressive patient. To say I was surprised and shocked at such a comment, and more to the point, that this was, I believe, directly affecting the level of care I was getting from the hospital was disappointing, to put it mildly. I'm hoping to get some sort of written response so I can decide if this issue needs to be pursued further by some sort of official or even legal complaint.
"Amputation blues"
About: Geraldton Hospital Geraldton Hospital Geraldton 6530
Posted by Pegleg (as ),
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