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Care Opinion

3 hour wait then dispute over treatment

Posted By capricornushm48

"3 hour wait then dispute over treatment"

About: Cowes Phillip Island Health Hub

(as the patient),

After a week of treatment at another medical practice for a nasty infection that was responding to daily antibiotic injections, I had to go to the Hub recently for wound dressing and expected injection.

After what felt like a very long wait, I was ushered in to see the attending Doctor. I had the required medicines with me and a letter from my Doctor at the other practice describing my diagnosis and treatment needed.

The Hub Doctor told me, I felt with certainty, that all three medications were, in their opinion, incorrect and they refused to administer them. Then the doctor decided I needed a tetanus shot and sent me on my way with googled instructions regarding antibiotics to give to my Doctor! 

I, therefore, did not complete my course of antibiotics and the wound was left not dressed. It seemed I had to wait to get back to the other medical practice for professional attention.

Is there a code of conduct between Doctors? Causing a patient to doubt their own GP seems highly disrespectful to me. 

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Responses

Response from Jan Child, CEO, Bass Coast Health 3 years ago
Jan Child
CEO,
Bass Coast Health

Submitted on 17/02/2021 at 8:20 AM
Published on Care Opinion at 9:49 AM

picture of Jan Child

Dear capricornushm48,

Thank you for taking the time to provide your feedback. I would love to speak to you to get more detail so that I can ask our Clinical Director of Emergency review to your case in relation to our treatment and speak to the doctor involved. It sounds like our response was not helpful, and I apologise genuinely that this was the case. We should be communicating with your treating GP if we had queries, and I am not at all sure why the wound wasn't dressed - this would be our expectation. It would be great if you could text or call me with your name and DOB so that we can follow up with the staff on duty. My phone number is 0472 846 355.

As to the waiting, I understand your frustration and am sorry you had a delay in seeing someone. The urgent care centre is staffed by one doctor and one nurse (and in Summer periods more staff) and they see patients who are sickest first, rather than like a GP clinic where there is an appointment time. This sometimes results in a delay for people who are medically stable, when they are caring for people who are less stable. We do try to communicate delays and I don't know if this occurred and would be keen to know.

The wait times are also complicated by the Pandemic - we offer testing to the community so they don't have to travel to Wonthaggi but if the one nurse is in their PPE and another few are waiting to be tested, we tend to test a few people at once while the nurse is already in their full PPE. We have had extra staffing on when testing demand is high. If I know the date, I can follow this up also and see why there was a delay.

I hope I hear from you so I can further investigate - thank you for reaching out - telling us these things helps us improve.

Kind Regards,

Jan

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