2 replies to this topic

[surprisepig!]

http://news.brisbane...91118-il9c.html

A Hobart hospital patient rang triple-0 for help at his bedside after waiting for a nurse to attend to him, Tasmania's health complaints commissioner says.

Commissioner Simon Allston's annual report includes a complaint from the patient who was recovering in the Hobart Private Hospital's high-dependency unit after an operation.

He awoke to find he was bleeding from a wound drain and rang his call bell to obtain assistance.

No-one responded immediately and after 10 minutes he rang his wife who rang the nurses station but the call went unanswered.

"They both eventually rang triple-0," Mr Allston's report says.

The hospital's night duty supervisor then went to the ward and arrived at the same time as two nurses.

They had been attending other patients before answering the complainant's call bell.

The hospital told the complaints commission that it was unavoidable that there would be times when all available nurses would be occupied with other patients.

Mr Allston said the hospital agreed however that the high-dependency room accommodating the complainant was not ideally situated for observation.

All high-dependency patients are now being accommodated in a different 10-bed coronary care unit, he said.

The hospital also said arrangements had been made to divert calls from the nurses station to the switchboard or emergency department after a certain number of rings.

Mr Allston in his report noted that the ratio of nurses to patients was reasonable and, on the basis of the hospital's response, no recommendations were made.

[surprisepig!]

Triple - 0 is the Australian equivilent of 911 for the US. While laughable, it is pretty alarming that the patient needed to call 000 to get bedside assistance in a high dependancy ward.

[Kelly A]

I assume that's the equivalent of the Intensive/Coronary Care Unit here, and that doesn't seem right.

My brother recently spent a couple of weeks in the ICU, and I think the maximum response to something mildly serious was about 60 seconds.

Edited by Kelly A, 17 November 2009 - 08:26 PM.