"Acute renal infection"

On a recent evening, I called an ambulance to my home because I was experiencing acute abdominal pains and a fever which I attributed to an infection following a cystoscopy a week or so earlier at another hospital. The subsequent diagnosis was acute pyelonephritis with only a single kidney present. The other kidney had been removed a few months earlier due to cancer. I was discharged under oral antibiotics and a referral back to the urologist team where I had a CT 1 cystoscopy and bladder biopsy booked.

Without going into too much detail, my experience at Pingelly was far from what I consider to be satisfactory in that the staff in attendance seemed not to work as a team and I felt certainly lacked any degree of empathy in my situation. A clinician seemed to struggle with the triage process and the staff didn't really seem that interested. It seemed to take an eternity for the triage process to progress to the stage where doctors at telehealth became aware of my presence at the medical center. At no stage during this extended triage process was I offered any form of pain relief. I did inform the staff that I had taken panadol before I went to bed.

Once a clinician did try to act on the referral, the telehealth video system was not functioning well and I recall the staff had no idea of how to potentially adjust volume or anything to do with the telehealth system. After a number of discussions on the land line to a member of staff, the clinician requested that they dial into my mobile phone so that they could talk to me. After much ado, I understand the clinician issued some scripts to the staff member via email which the staff member was unable to access or print. In addition to this the staff member inserted a canula into my arm which I recall resulted in a large blood spill and much cursing and running around trying to settle the canula in place. Once that happened, a blood sample was taken and given to a different staff member to process. They subsequently spilled the sample on the bench and was unsuccessful in processing the sample for the clinician. At the time of writing this, the scarring from this canula is still very evident.

During all of this, I naturally felt quite anxious about what was going on. When I did question the delays I felt I was responded to quite rudely by the second staff member who seemed to take things personally and I believe saw me more of a hindrance to their lifestyle. I felt they badgered me to the extent where I asked the initial staff member to take all attachments from my body so that I could return home and seek an alternate line of assistance. They subsequently stood the second staff member aside and took control.

From there, instructions were given for my immediate transfer to a nearby hospital. That resulted in a delay of some hours because an ambulance crew could not be assembled until the morning. All the time, I was just lying there in pain with no real relief in sight. I think I ended up in the other hospital about later in the morning which constitutes about 10 hours or more since my admission to Pingelly. The first thing they needed to do was take and process blood samples which I felt should have been made available during initial triage.

In summary, this is an experience which I will never forget. The trauma and anxiety I experienced carried through to my experience at the other hospital which made it more difficult for their team to settle things down. The team at the other hospital were first class and more power to them! Basically, I identified a number of shortcomings which need to be addressed at Pingelly based on my experience:

1. A complete lack of empathy by both staff members.

2. The initial staff member seemed untrained in the environment at Pingelly and I recall was certainly challenged in their understanding of technology. The situation regarding the canula was to say the least, unsatisfactory and distressing to me.

3. The lack of availability of an ambulance in the middle of the night I feel is a potential for disaster but I do understand the needs of the volunteers. In this instance, I believe an acute renal infection where only one kidney exists could easily have resulted in a fatality.

4. I feel the behaviour of then second staff member was bordering on childish and was provocative. In my opinion, maybe it's time they have a roster change and received some supervised retraining.

I find this incident very disturbing and am thankful that the team in the other hospital who were so professional as to their understanding of the seriousness of this situation.

I look forward to a formal response once you have investigated this matter.