"The hospital's scheduled surgeries"

The first night we arrived at Perth Children's Hospital in Emergency, my child had broken their arm and needed to have the bone moved back into place then cast.

We waited for 7 hours and they told us they can't do anything tonight, they would call us with an appointment. But while we were there, there was a young child who I believe had gastro and threw up on the couches in the Emergency wait room. Their parent wiped it quickly with a baby wipe and told the nurse to get someone to clean it.

The nurse then moved the child who had gastro into a room but no one came to clean the seat. I was having to tell people not to sit there as it hadn't been cleaned. Then, when we finally went for our X-rays I came back and another little child and their parents were sitting on the couch that I believe hadn't been cleaned. I was shocked at how the hospital didn't clean this immediately and handle it better. I have no doubt those who sat there will now get gastro too. In my opinion, such a simple thing that could have been dealt with and saved a lot of germs getting spread. 

We then arrived back two days later for my child's scheduled surgery. My child fasted from early morning, only to be told that night, they can't fit us in anymore and to go home, they will call us with another appointment. So my poor child had not eaten for 11 hours for no reason. The staff during the day seemed to have had no idea on when my child was going in for surgery, it took ages to get our room in the first place and, in my opinion, no one was very helpful at all. 

We then got called the following day to come back in ASAP in the morning because we have a spot on the morning list my child will be done before 11 am. It was the surgeon who called me this time to tell me it will definitely be done early. Well, what do you know, late afternoon and we were still waiting there. My child was hungry and beside themselves.

I am absolutely appalled at how much we have been mucked around. I have other young kids at home, my spouse has had to come home early from their job away which we had all planned and then the hospital keeps pushing us back and back.

In my opinion, the organisation of these surgeries is disgraceful. There is clearly not enough staff on for the number of surgeries that need to happen. So you are making kids wait, in my opinion, torturing them more because they are so hungry and stuffing families around because I believe you don't want to fund to have more theatre's open and staff on.

I believe one poor child waited 27 hours without food recently as they kept saying they were going to get their surgery but nope, it was over a day before they got it. Yet they had been told it was scheduled for a certain time.

Based on my experience, there needs to be something done about the way the emergency waitlist surgeries are scheduled. It is just not good enough at our so-called top-notch hospital to have this sort of unreliability and disorganisation. Not to mention I have spent money on parking and we still haven't even had our surgery that was so-called scheduled in!

I will be taking this further, hoping to be heard so the process changes for our children. I have no faith in this hospital now, I feel scared for the poor kids that have to come here and be made to wait, I feel, very unrealistic wait times. And I know it's not just because of COVID as the nurses told me, it's always like this and it's heartbreaking for the children. I'm sure others have complained, so when will something be changed to improve it?