"Lack of acknowledgement while waiting hours for surgery"

A few weeks ago, I received a call to say my child had a place for surgery on the Monday of the next week.

I did all the pre-admission calls and booked a flight to Perth for the end of the week I received the call on.

Whilst on the flight I received a voice message saying my child's surgery was cancelled.

I phoned the next morning to talk to the person that left me the voicemail, however, the ENT specialist called back and explained it was too early for my child to have surgery. However, as I had made the fairly long and expensive trip down, to come in at 8 am on the Monday.

On the day I wrote this story, we arrived prior to 8 am. Checked in with a nice efficient lady and proceeded to the short stay unit. We presented there, gave paperwork and sat down. After approx. 1 hour a nurse came and said it would be a few more hours before my child could have scans. They had been advised to fast just in case surgery did proceed. Same nurse brought my child a juice. We asked if we could leave for a little while and return. Nurse went off and said my child could get scans in the next hour. We waited and my child went off and had scans. They were back about 25 minutes later. We then continued to wait. At around another hour later (3 hours after arrival) I asked when my child would see a doctor. A seemingly rude receptionist said they didn’t know.

We continued to wait for another 45 mins (almost 4 hours after sitting down) then I had to leave. I have a bad back and it was killing me. I was really upset about pretty much being ignored I felt, for 4 hours. The first nurse was nice but after that initial juice and chat around two hours earlier, we didn’t see them until we went back.

I don’t know how the reception (point of contact staff) could completely ignore us for almost 4 hours. I went down to where we checked in. I was really upset (I have private health and was advised to use this as this was beneficial to the hospital). I explained that I had no idea if we were to see anyone or whether we were to sit all day and be ignored.

They made a couple of calls to be advised that we had wandered off – I’m surprised they noticed! They managed to ignore us for the first 4 hours. I felt that all those two front line staff had to do was acknowledge us and keep us basically informed. In my opinion, they are a terrible advertisement for your hospital. I doubt they will think they have done anything wrong – based on my experience, it seems they simply don’t give a crap.

I run a small business. I am not needy and appreciate everything the health facilities do. My relative is a doctor, and have another relative in their 5th year of medicine, and another relative is a Physio but that day was a really poor experience. I just hope not too many other people have the same experience.