Heading in the right direction

The campaign slogan earlier this year for the Iemma government in NSW was “More to do but we’re heading in the right direction“.  I have to wonder what that direction is.  Judging by the performance of the public hospital system in NSW, it can only be heading towards some sort of third world shithole of a city which Iemma and co have as their role model for health care.

Earlier this week, Jana Horska went to Sydney’s Royal North Shore Hospital (RNSH), experiencing abdominal pains, and symptoms similar to those of a miscarriage she had previously experienced.  Despite complaining of acute pain, she was not seen by a doctor or given painkillers.  She was 14 weeks’ pregnant and had suffered a miscarriage in March.

Her husband complained to the emergency room staff about her pain but was repeatedly told to sit down and wait.  She was crouched down writhing in pain before racing to a toilet, where her husband found her:

“Here’s my wife sitting on a toilet, screaming with a look on her face I’ll never get out of my mind, holding a live foetus between her legs with blood everywhere,”

Thats terrible, but then:

“People have come running (from) everywhere.

“I can’t go into the finer details, it’s just so gruesome, mate. It’s just something I wouldn’t say on air.

“She’s holding the little fetus in her hand, basically, and was wheeled out of the toilet in front of this packed waiting room.

“Not only that, but once they found her a bed they left her lying with the fetus between her legs for one hour.”

Hardly surprising that Ms Horska is traumatised, and fearful of falling pregnant again.  According to her:

“I just can’t believe that no one helped me,” 

“There were three or four nurses behind the waiting room screen. I thought, ‘Surely if I sit in front of them they will see my pain and help me’.”

“What makes me angry is that I got all this attention afterwards - and that is what I should have got in the first place.”

Now while NSW Health minister Reba Meagher (as good an example as you’ll find of a party apparatchik rising through the ranks despite never having done a real job) has apologised to the couple, everyone is of course ducking for cover … the Nurses union, the government.  The government has announced an inquiry but has sought to keep it in-house and with very limited terms of reference … no doubt it will find it was just an unfortunate combination of circumstances and there is really nothing that can be done and no-one who can be blamed or held accountable.

One thing NSW government ministers must be getting very good at is apologising …hospitals, trains, police etc.  Umm, what about fixing some of the fuckups before they happen rather than continually saying sorry for them.  I await eagerly the day when a minister, official, clinician, train driver, policeman gets the bullet for an inexcusable fuckup (as opposed to the usual no-one’s responsible, oops we’re sorry, we’ll try better to not let it happen again).

And I was very unimpressed by the spokeswoman from the Nurses union.  It was pretty much shit happens, and its all management/government’s fault.  She was very stuck on procedure and rules …what about thinking of outcomes?  The biggest problem in cases such as this is the staff not seeming to give a rats arse about the person with the problem.  Giving a damn would probably solve most of the problems …in this case Ms Horska was almost certainly going to miscarry anyway, but I’m sure that traumatic enough event could have been handled much better if any one of the staff in the emergency room had given a shit about her.  Obviously they didn’t.