"Constantly changing doctors, stress and ball dropping"

My family member was experiencing a long hospital stay in Busselton Hospital. So far at the time of writing this, I recall they had 3 different treating doctors. Every time we got a new doctor I felt we had to explain all the circumstances and health issues all over. There seemed to be no in-depth patient handover to ensure the new doctor had a very good understanding of the patient’s situation. I recall each doctor asked us to update them but then rushed me, talked over me and I felt did not listen which I assume was due to being time poor and overloaded, in my opinion.

There was no family advocacy to assist me in this. I found it was a waste of time getting a doctor up to speed and get partway through a suitable discharge plan only to find a new doctor starts the following week who it seemed wanted to change or scrap the current discharge plan. Based on my experience, families are also not consulted about discharge planning.

I believe one doctor made discharge and accommodation plans for our elderly family member without consulting any family. Because I felt no one really listened, I believe they did not fully understand the needs of the family member or our family and the person who should advocate for us was following a discharge plan that neither our family or our family member had agreed to. I felt we were then treated as being difficult and like we were trying to force our family member to live somewhere against their will when in fact I believe the hospital advocate and doctors were doing this.

At another time an important blood test was missed even though it was recorded in the ward diary and I recall we made 3 reminder phone calls to the hospital. I believe this resulted in an unneeded 200km round trip to take our family member to chemo that ended up cancelled due to their low blood platelet results which had to be taken and rushed through in another hospital on the day.

This patient being a long-term alcoholic also had alcohol in their file as a prescription and still I recall many nurses refused their request for their 2 stubbies a day. I felt this took numerous conversations to sort out.

All this resulted in huge stress on my family already dealing with this family member being terminal. I felt it created confusion and stress on the patient who I believe had not enjoyed being there at all.

In my opinion, no one wants to take responsibility when balls get dropped, things are missed and not followed up on. I felt they all shifted the blame and I believe at one stage even blamed me, then I got handed a form to complain here.

I recall numerous times I had mentioned my family member’s very bad short term memory loss issue and they started to share strange stories with us, behaving oddly in shops saying they’d paid for items when they haven’t, telling us they asked us all day to take them somewhere when he hadn't. Each time we mentioned this, I felt staff did a mini assessment on the spot then said my family member was fine to make decisions.... we did not question their ability to make decisions, we were expressing concern there was something changing in their brain. Again I felt no one was hearing us. They seemed to take it that we were saying my family member couldn’t make decisions and we wanted to enact their EPG. Nothing is further from the truth! Being treated like we did I felt was very hurtful.

All we felt is they wanted my family member out whether the discharge plan suited them or not, it seemed they didn't want to look at their memory issues or listen to anything we wanted to say.

I felt I couldn't talk to any ward coordinator, doctor or patient advocate. I hated visiting my family member there so avoided it if I could which was terrible because they were terminal.