"Wound Care clinic closed again"

The Wound Care Clinic has been shut down at the hospital in Dongara WA yet again, for at least the last two to three months. I have written previously about this service being shut down after they apparently ran out of some leftover Covid funding and then suddenly they found some funding to start it back up again. Life was good, or at least somewhat better, because we could make an appointment time to come in and get our wounds dressed. 

Now that the Wound Care clinic is closed down again we have been thrown back into the triage system of the Emergency Department and have to wait in the systems rotation to get our wounds dressed and sent on our merry way. I have had to wait up to 4.5 hours on occasion to wait my turn to get my wounds dressed and it's just not good enough.

This also isn't fair to the nurses who have to push through genuine medical emergencies and then fit wound dressings into their already packed day and have to learn specialised wound dressing techniques that most regular nurses aren't required to learn on regular wards as I found recently in a metropolitan hospital upon arriving there after a heart attack. They had no nurse there at all who knew how to address my wounds dressings.

There is no longer a dedicated wound care specialist nurse who knows the latest wound care  practices and you get a new nurse, to my particular wounds, almost every single time who has to waste lots of time asking the head nurse what specifically needs to be done for my wounds. My wounds are slightly particular as I also need extra compression to slow or stop my heavy edema which causes the wounds to stay open and not heal.

I have asked on several occasions when, or if, the service is going to reopen and why it stopped again. The answers have ranged from "we don't know" to ""they" can't find another nurse" to ""They" can't afford another nurse" and recently it was "yes we can afford some services but "they" don't really care about providing the service again". how about you tell us the truth about why this has happened and has been going along again for so long?

Every time I visit the ED to wait for wound dressings there is almost always at least one other patient there waiting for the same service. I understand this service was provided for people falling under the My Aged Care Umbrella and it needs to continue considering the numbers of aged residents in this smallish community.

This impacts a lot of lives, mostly elderly from what I have seen, in this community so please address it and get it started again. 

Looking forward to a straight reply to this mess.