Luke Henderson

Review of Barwon Health

What happened tonight in your ED is so unbelievabl...

What happened tonight in your ED is so unbelievable that I m still trying to process the events. Around 1am my partner woke me up because his right side wouldn t stop twitching. He s an epileptic and had a major seizure only 3 days ago, so I was worried he was about to have another. I called an ambulance straight away, and followed them up to the hospital. I came into the ED waiting room and stood at the counter to see a triage nurse. The first 2 minutes, nobody was at the desk. There were multiple team members looking at me from the back of the hall behind the desk area, yet nobody came. When one did come over, I was ignored for over 3 minutes of me standing right there in front of her. No acknowledgement at all. When I tried to give her my partner s details, it seemed like such a burden to have me standing there. As I was passing on the information, my partner came out from the ward exit door into the waiting room. I d assumed that he just needed to sign something, but I was wrong. Your hospital ejected my partner into the waiting room and asked him to wait there with me and a doctor would be with us shortly to assess him. I was concerned about this since he was still twitching, but I thought since it was only a short wait, it wouldn t be so bad. For the next 4 hours we sat patiently in your waiting room, with my partner continuing to have sporadic twitching for over an hour of that time. The longer we waited, the more concerned I got. When my partner came to the desk to ask about the remaining wait time, he was told that he was next in line , but the doctor who was due to see him would have to liaise with his neurosurgeon anyway, and that wasn t possible until during the day. Essentially us waiting there was completely useless. I just want to know, WHY the hell would you let us wait for over 3 hours, and only proceed to give us that information when we asked? There was ample opportunity for the desk nurse to ask these questions as my partner first came into the waiting room, but she chose not to give a toss and couldn t be bothered. I cannot begin to tell you how angry I am with the situation. I didn t call an ambulance just for my partner to be taken into the waiting room and dumped as if he simply had the common cold. This was a very serious misjudgement on the hospital s part, and incredibly careless and reckless. It s fortunate that he didn t end up having another fit, but that doesn t excuse the disgusting behaviour and treatment of patients in your ED. As a hospital you should be ashamed of the service you provide. The decisions you choose to make can be have a huge impact on the health of your patients, and in this case, you seriously dropped the ball and let us down. I can t believe an ED like yours even functions in its current state, and I strongly suggest you fix it before the cost of negligence ends up becoming someone s life.