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Accommodating additional needs

Posted By Person1

"Accommodating additional needs"

About: Child and Adolescent Community Health

(as a service user),

I was previously seeing a School health nurse, and I found the experience was far from compassionate. It seemed the nurse would limit the amount of appointments that I could have and was very uncaring and I felt had no compassion. I have autism spectrum disorder, and I recall other children with ASD also said that this nurse refused to accommodate for their reasonable needs. In my opinion, this nurse showed zero respect, and would make me sit in a certain position in the room, probably so that I couldn’t see that they weren't recording my information. This nurse then decided to refuse seeing me, I believe because of my ASD symptoms, and I recall they said that they were scared of me, which I believe was because of my ASD.

The school also confronted me in a highly traumatic way and told me that I was dangerous and could not receive any more care for this nurse's own safety, which I feel is unreasonable and unsafe to refuse care. I ended up having to leave this school and exit receiving care due to the experience, because this nurse was seemingly unable to compassionately care for children with additional needs.

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Responses

Response from Anne-Marie McHugh, A/Nurse Co-Director, Community Health, Child and Adolescent Health Service nearly 2 years ago
Anne-Marie McHugh
A/Nurse Co-Director, Community Health,
Child and Adolescent Health Service

Submitted on 15/09/2022 at 4:22 PM
Published on Care Opinion at 4:22 PM

Dear Person1,

I am very sorry to read you felt disrespected and uncared for when attending our school nursing services. I apologise sincerely for your experience.

Our nursing service aims to work in partnership with schools to provide compassionate individualised care and support tailored to student’s needs. Your experience is not how we want consumers to feel when accessing our services and I very much appreciate the time you have taken to raise your concerns both for yourself and other consumers.

I do hope you are now receiving access to appropriate care and support. With this in mind I would like the opportunity to review your situation and see how we can better support you and provide guidance to our teams.

Please be reassured any information provided will be treated with the utmost care and confidentiality.

If you would like to discuss the matter further and provide additional information to follow-up, I would like to invite you to please contact our Consumer Engagement Team by calling (08) 6456 0032 between 8.30am – 4.30pm Monday to Friday or email CAHSFeedback@health.wa.gov.au.

Thank you again for taking the time to provide this feedback.

Kind Regards

Anne-Marie McHugh

A/Nurse Co-Director, Community Health

Child and Adolescent Health Service

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