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Care Opinion

Amazing Help by the PSA

Posted By rindercella

"Amazing Help by the PSA"

About: Bunbury Hospital / Emergency Department

(as a parent/guardian),

Recently I had to attend ED with my child who had quite a severe break to their arm. When we were triaged and sent to the "Fast Track" side to wait to be seen, my child was absolutely freezing. I imagine part of it was shock and also they had damp clothes on and was sitting in the Air Conditioning. Tracy a beautiful PSA saw this and immediately offered my child a blanket to warm them up. An hour later we were finally put through to have an x-ray that Tracy escorted us to. Tracy made my child feel secure and had such great empathy. After the x-ray was done my child was walking back to fast track and suddenly was very nauseous. Tracy acted quickly to get a sick bag and then escorted us to a bathroom and helped us sort them out.

Tracy then continued to check on us the for the next 5 hours my child was sitting in ED. In those 5 hours we had not been seen by a Dr at all, or given any explanation or information as to what was happening. Finally we were given a bed just before Midnight. Only to be seen by a Dr that I believe had no information about what was happening nor had they even seen the x-ray. Finally my child was offered something to eat and some pain relief. My child hadn't eaten since 4pm because we were told to fast incase they needed surgery. So the food my child was given was their last meal before they had to fast because they did indeed need surgery the following morning.

If it wasn't for Tracy I think I would have felt very unseen. She made sure we were as comfortable as she could make us, and just a quick hello made the difference.

The amount of time we had to wait to get any information however, I felt was unacceptable, as a Student healthcare worker myself even if we're just given an update as to what was happening so that we did not feel forgotten I believe would have helped, but no one said anything.

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Responses

Response from Amber Hargans, Nurse Unit Manager, Bunbury Critical Care Directorate, WACHS South West 15 months ago
Amber Hargans
Nurse Unit Manager, Bunbury Critical Care Directorate,
WACHS South West

Submitted on 19/01/2023 at 12:28 PM
Published on Care Opinion at 12:36 PM

Dear rindercella

Thank you for taking the time to provide feedback regarding your recent experience at the Bunbury Emergency Deparmtent. We are very proud of our dedicated PCA team and it will be my pleasure to pass on your kind words to Tracey.

I would like to take this opportunity to apologise that the communication from clinical staff did not meet your expectations. I can understand how frustrated you must have felt not knowing what the plan of care was for your child.

I do hope that the surgery went well and their arm is healing nicely.

Kind regards,

Amber Hargans

Clinical Nurse Manager

Emergency Department

Bunbury Hospital

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Response from Hugh Mitenko, Deputy Medical Director, Emergency Department, Bunbury Hospital 14 months ago
Hugh Mitenko
Deputy Medical Director, Emergency Department,
Bunbury Hospital

Submitted on 20/02/2023 at 7:05 PM
Published on Care Opinion on 21/02/2023 at 9:54 AM

Dear rindercella,

Thank you very much for your feedback. Our ED works hard to maintain and improve the care we provide to our patients and their families. When you take the time to put down the details of an episode like you did, I am sure you are speaking for many more who ‘just couldn’t be bothered.’ Because of what you have described, I will be able to send a message to our staff.

The way our ED works, any doctor or nurse in the entire department is able to see all the patients currently registered, what we know about them from the triage nurse, and how long they have been waiting. I will send a clear message to the ED staff: when patients have been waiting for a long time, if you are not able to fully assess a patient, please touch base with them. Patients are usually very understanding of the difficulties of ED workloads and a one or two minute communication about this does not take a significant amount of your time, but it can make a significant difference to a patient who feels lost, alone, and forgotten.

There might have been several reasons why our staff were unable to assess your child in a timely fashion. Without knowing exactly which day this occurred I am unable to comment on what else may have been happening in our ED, including the number of patients in ED, the number or presence of critically ill or dying patients in ED, staffing levels or sick calls that day, or any of a number of other factors. Any or all of these occur on a regular basis but making that human connection does not take a lot of time, and as you said, ‘a quick hello’ can make a huge difference.

Hugh Mitenko

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Update posted by rindercella (a parent/guardian)

I appreciate your feedback. The incident occurred early in January 2023. I believe they were waiting for specialist feedback etc in order to decide what to do, but not offering any kind of pain relief or feedback as to what was going on was difficult.

I couldn't leave my child's side, to ask anyone, as I was holding them in a position that supported their limb. I understand that the ED is always under a huge amount of pressure, with non-urgent patients coming through and also critical patients from the surrounding areas. The ED needs to be twice the size and with twice the staff in an ideal world, but unfortunately those of us with a brain and foresight, were not the ones who designed the ED that would allow for population growth, social issues etc that put more strain then necessary on the department in my opinion.

So I absolutely understand why they took so long to get my child sorted but again 5 mins to check up on them, do obs, and offer pain relief would have made a big difference.

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