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Discharged without paperwork or helpful information

Posted By earmarkqd65

"Discharged without paperwork or helpful information"

About: Fiona Stanley Hospital / Acute Surgical Unit and Trauma Department Fiona Stanley Hospital / General Surgery Department & Ward 7A & Ward 7B Fiona Stanley Hospital / Operating Theatres, Post Anaesthetic Care Unit Fiona Stanley Hospital / Orthopaedics & Ward 4A

(as the patient),

Recently, I was dispatched from Fiona Stanley Ward 4 (I think it was the orthopaedic Ward) without a scrap of paper, my Discharge Paperwork. A nurse told me I can wait for 2 hours downstairs or they can post it out to me.

So without any knowledge of whether I needed bed rest for 1 or 2 days, should continue on my newly introduced soft diet (breakfast that morning) after being on a clear liquid diet since the week before in the morning. Can I get back on the coffee with milk or even enjoy a glass of vino with a chilli Mexican dish? Do I need to book up a follow-up appointment with my GP or a Specialist? So after two days in Fiona Stanley Hospital where I was filled with 15 ML of Morphine, had my stomach delved into on an operating table, fed more opioids for pain till early hours of that morning all for a strangulated bowel - blood supply cut off to my bowel - could I drive home? who knows because in my opinion, Fiona Stanley didn’t.

I believe if I had Covid would I have got the top treatment. All staff were wonderful, I just felt they were very disoriented, disorganised and desperate to free up beds. Ps. My initial walk into Emergency at Fiona Stanley was an 8-hour wait but in so much pain I walked out threw up, stubbled, no one came to help till my spouse came back from getting the car to load me into it and take me to another hospital where we still had a 3 to 4-hour wait but they could see I was very ill and took me in then realising I was seriously ill, organised an ambulance to take me back to Fiona Stanley for an emergency operation to save my bowel. If I went home what would have happened to me?

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Responses

Response from Neil Doverty, Executive Director Fiona Stanley and Fremantle Hospitals Group, South Metropolitan Health Service 3 years ago
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Neil Doverty
Executive Director Fiona Stanley and Fremantle Hospitals Group,
South Metropolitan Health Service

Submitted on 12/03/2021 at 11:29 AM
Published on Care Opinion at 12:09 PM

picture of Neil Doverty

Dear earmarkqd65,

I am sorry to hear of your recent health emergency – it does sound like it was awfully painful and would have been an extremely stressful time for you and your partner.

I have been in touch with managers responsible for the wards you have referenced; Emergency Department (ED), 7A&B, and 4A.

The Nurse Unit Managers of wards 7 and 4 apologise that the questions you had prior to discharge were not addressed with you and for the delay in receiving your discharge paperwork. The intent was to minimise additional time spent waiting for paperwork. All post-operative patients should have a dietetic assessment prior to discharge and we apologise that this was not facilitated. In order for us to learn from your experience and investigate further, I urge you to contact our Nurse Director (Service 3) on 6152 2222 to enable her to look into your admission for you.

Regarding your experience in the ED; our ED is the busiest ED in the state, and one of the busiest in the country. All patients attending ED are triaged using the Australasian Triage Scale (ATS). The ATS aims to ensure that patients presenting to EDs are treated in the order of their clinical urgency and allocated to the most appropriate assessment and treatment area. Having said that, I agree with you; it is unacceptable for anyone to wait 8 hours to receive medical attention, regardless of their clinical emergency, and I apologise for this wait.

I would like to assure you that improving the timely access to emergency medical assessment and treatment is a high priority of this hospital. We are constantly looking at new initiatives to address this. For example, on Monday 1 February 2021, we launched the Ambulatory Emergency Care Clinic (AECC). The AECC aims to improve access to timely care with ED presentations able to be streamed directly from triage to the AECC – thus increasing capacity in the ED.

On Monday 8 February 2021 we also started a Virtual Emergency Medicine (VEM) program. This is a joint program with St John Ambulance which has seen the establishment of tele-triage of ambulance patients bound for FSH so that they can be directly admitted to the most appropriate department; for example, admitting patients directly to Medical Imaging when a fracture is suspected as likely.

There are a few other initiatives underway, and a workshop occurred earlier this month with key staff to again look at what else we can do to achieve better wait times for our patients in the ED.

Again, I apologise that your experience was less than ideal at Fiona Stanley Hospital. I sincerely wish you well for your continuing recovery.

Kind regards,

Neil Doverty

Group Executive Director

Fiona Stanley Fremantle Hospitals Group

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