"Inverell Hospital, clean kind and compassionate."

My husband has MS and had an exacerbation of the disease causing him to lose the ability to walk. He was also delusional. The ambulance paramedics (Liam and Tracey) were absolutely wonderful and seemed to listen to what I said and I think treated my husband with the utmost care and respect. He was admitted to Inverell hospital around 1.30am, I could not fault the nursing and medical staff, Dr Thanh Huynh was very kind and considerate and I believe his immediate action helped my husband get through a very difficult time. The hospital itself was exceptionally clean and light and it was great to see beds being washed down as soon as patients left and beds being made tidy often. Nurses were there all the time and seemed to be on the ball. To me, all necessary tests were taken and he was put on high dose antibiotics and methylprednisolone for a period of 5 days. The only thing that was difficult was contacting emergency services to get him to hospital it took me an hour to get a response and then another 45 minuted for the ambulance to arrive (not their fault it is a fair distance to our town). We really need more first response people here and in every small country town, I think we are losing family members due to the time it takes to get adequate treatment. The NSW Government needs to get their act together regarding rural medical services, a couple of nurse practitioners who are allowed to visit patients after hours and an ambulance station in each town would I think help, indenturing graduate doctors to a town at the end of their training and making them stay at least 3 years would give us, I believe, a standard of health like the big cities. (That means service without an escape clause i.e. they will not get their degree until they have satisfactorily completed rural service.