Emotional rollercoast

Helen Goltz

Any patient will tell you that the care they receive from hospital staff in the Illawarra is second to none, but getting admitted in the first place is where the frustration begins.

Councillor Christine Jeffreys from Oak Flats has taken off her councillor hat and is experiencing what it is like to be a patient awaiting an operation.

Ms Jeffreys has Crohn’s disease, an inflammatory bowel and autoimmune disease, the symptoms of which are not often visible but include abdominal pain, vomiting, skin rashes, arthritis, and inflammation of the eye.

She is waiting on an “emotional merry go round” for an operation which needs three days of preparation.

“I don’t usually go public with my condition, I just get on with it,” she said. “I attended a perioperative clinic at Wollongong hospital to be assessed prior to my operation.

“I was told that I needed to prepare myself for surgery, then phone the hospital at 6am on the morning that my operation is scheduled.”

Ms Jeffreys was told that if there were no beds available, then the operation would be re-scheduled.

“How can they do this to people? We do not live in a third or even second world country, yet our local, newly refurbished hospital cannot cope with demand.

“It is a very emotional time for someone to prepare themselves for surgery without having the additional stress of not knowing that the scheduled operation will actually occur.”

Ms Jeffreys said it was about time the hospital had “the capacity to treat the people within the region with the dignity they deserve.”

Cr Jeff Bailey, whose ward includes the Shellharbour hospital area, said he had heard from a number of people who were not happy with the hospital waiting times.

“There’s a great deal of disappointment that in a city of our size and with the projected increased population growth, that services are not what they should be,” he said.

A spokesperson for South Eastern Sydney Illawarra Area Health (SESIH) said whilst every effort is made to maintain the elective or non-emergency surgery schedule, emergency surgery must always take priority.

“We simply cannot predict emergency activity. Rescheduling surgery is always a last resort and patients are informed as a matter of courtesy that this may occur,” the spokesperson said.

“Elective surgery patients are asked to call on the morning of surgery so they do not have the added stress of making their way to hospital, if surgery cannot be performed because of an emergency or other higher clinical priority.”

Ms Jeffreys said there was speculation that hospital beds were being taken up by elderly patients who were waiting for placement in nursing homes.

The spokesperson for SESIH denied this was the case.