"Our stay at Sale Hospital"

We had a medical emergency and were transferred to the Sale Hospital for further tests and pain management. The level of care and kindness shown to us as complete strangers has left us humbled, it has also given us need to commend an amazing team of people.

It seems a difficult time to become ill during the festive season with reduced staff numbers and limited services to diagnose medical problems during this time. I am fully aware funding has driven hospitals to operate more like businesses, but that is little comfort when you're facing a medical emergency without any ability to do anything about it but wait. 

We presented at the Bairnsdale Hospital late last year. The staff in the ED were excellent they were kind efficient and within a short period of time had narrowed down what the problem may be. They conducted the tests available to them and soon realised they didn’t have the imaging and expertise for our problem. They quickly arranged patient transport to get us transferred to Sale. They were incredibly busy at the time but made the time to give us the highest level of care. For that you have our gratitude.

The patient transport ladies that did the transfer were very funny they did a great job of pain management, but as well as that did their best to distract us from a seemingly dark day - you can’t imagine what a fabulous distraction that banter was, well done girls.

We arrived at Sale Hospital late in the afternoon on New Year’s Eve, the ED was crazy. It was extremely busy and it appeared they had several emergency’s on the go at once, some involving the police. Given what was going on we were well taken care of and before too long had found a bed. We were sent to the women’s and maternity department which was to be our home for the next few days while we waited to get further tests conducted. We encountered many of the staff in this department over these few days, as well as associated parts of the hospital that we had tests in. We can’t believe the level of kindness, compassion and professionalism we experienced. If your the CEO of the hospital and you're reading this we personally wish to thank you and your team of staff for making a very difficult time bearable. 

During our time at the Sale Hospital we had no doubt the people taking care of us genuinely cared for us, you can’t pay people to do that. Sure you can pay someone to turn up and do a job, but these people genuinely cared for strangers. So we wish to thank you all. We're now being transferred to a Melbourne facility but wish to pass on a sincere thank you from us both.