"Open Heart Surgery and Recovery FSH"

What a long journey. I should also preface this by stating I am a country patient.

Earlier this year I was finally told to attend Fiona Stanley Hospital for a pre-op appointment in preparation for an adult congenital heart defect repair. I believe I directly caught a terrible strain of Covid from attending this appointment. This left me with fluid on my lungs for 3 months, which I advised my case manager of.

The following month, I was still unwell from Covid but was given a new date. I called my case manager who, despite my doubts about being cleared for surgery, insisted I attend. I spent an entire day waiting due to an unexpected emergency, and was by the end of the day sent home due to still being too unwell from my covid infection.  I felt my case manager was consistently difficult to communicate with and did not listen to my concerns at any point. My case manager would state they were following up on advice which never came.

I am now several days post surgery after being cleared earlier this month for OHS. I was given incorrect start times and was forced to get up at 3am to start at 6am after a phonecall from FSH.

This is despite my letters stating 8am. I asked the receptionist for a record of this call which they said was not on record at all (I believe they didn't look at their computer to check anyway). 

The surgery went well and I am grateful for nurses on ICU and my ward, however, I did not feel as though I spent adequate time in ICU (12 hours approx), or really in hospital at all (5 days). 

I had one nurse who refused my pain medication over a 24 hour period, and then blamed my erratic breathing on the pain. This was the most infuriating experience I had whilst at FSH. This medication was charted and I did not recieve it! If i receive a response to this story i would like to formalise a complaint about this nurse. My parents arrived that morning to find me in excrutating pain and had to advocate for me to be attended to. I also believe that my drainage tubes were prematurely removed in response to this incident. As well as this, the patient in the room with me had a lesser procedure and was accommodated with fentanyl whilst i was left with 500mg panadol. My parents were also required to shower, dress me and change my sheets on at least 4 occasions due to no staff attendance. 

I felt the food was incredibly bad. I have never smelt such putrid meals. No one on the ward advised me that I could use the computer to change meals (which I could not physically reach) until my last day. I doubt this would have made much of a difference anyway.

It seemed my discharge was rushed and it has been a struggle to keep up with blood tests and requirements as I am supposed to check in with my regular GP to adjust my wafarin doses, however, I'm not able to leave the metro area for several more days and no GP in Perth will take me on to facilitate this.

I also feel less and less confident as days pass being outside of the hospital as I feel insufficient checks were done to my lungs, considering the trauma of covid prior to my surgery. 

In saying this, there were some great nurses on the ward who I believe do not get paid enough! Thank you to all the nurses who did listen and empathise with me and thank you to my surgeon who did a great job.

Based on my experience, FSH leaves a lot to be desired in terms of internal and external communication and it seems is clearly under resourced which impacts all the internal care. I believe a minority of nurses are non-compliant and a lack of beds and staff is extremely evident. Also very disappointed in the amount of money spent on things like parking, and TV? why are the 2 religious channels free, but actual free to air TV costs money and is locked.  I also was only connected with Physio and OT with no other services offered.