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Care Opinion

Emergency Department

Posted By hotelft58

"Emergency Department"

About: Peel Health Campus / Emergency Department

(as a parent/guardian),

Whilst my story is not a negative as so much was right about our visit. There is one main thing that we felt was not right.

Recently, my teenager arrived via Ambulance. Our meeting of nurses was lovely, the ambulance officers were a delight. We were put in an ABay awaiting to see our nurse. She was just heading out on her break so would be around 15-20 minutes til she came back. Jumping forward after my neurodiverse teenager waited, they were getting very agitated and the beeping of the monitors. The lovely lady, Rachel or Rebecca can't remember turned them off for us then said I'll be back in a minute. To us NT we understand things happen, people grab us, other patients may take a turn and need extra help.

Nurse came to us approx 1/2 hour later, which I can understand and when explained what 1 min to a ND she took that on board.

Jump forward again to a few trainee doctors, change over of nurse due to our nurse having a meeting and a few hours gone by. It was time to move into the main part of ED. A nurse who was trying to speak to my ND teenager, was eating their pizza. The nurse proceeded to rip the pizza (2pm hadnt eaten since 7) out of their mouth, while my spouse says our teenager will talk through me. I felt the nurse was quite rude saying, no, they will speak to me. My teenager was raging, I believe the nurse were lucky they didn't flip.

The previous nurse must have seen this and asked the new nurse to come for a handover. When they returned they were nice as pie. Maybe then they was told my teenager is neurodiverse and had been agitated most of the day. I think if my teenager wasn't under medication they may very well of then that would of opened up security and perhaps undue trauma. 3 days later my teenager is still upset on what the nurse did.

My recommendation is as they wasn't admitted, perhaps a sunflower symbol on their bed head or some other discrete but easy to see symbol or item needs to be there when a nurse who doesn't know the history steps in.

Happy to discuss further 

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Responses

Response from Kellie Blyth, Executive Director, Peel Health Campus, South Metropolitan Health Service yesterday
Kellie Blyth
Executive Director, Peel Health Campus,
South Metropolitan Health Service

Submitted on 3/04/2025 at 7:51 PM
Published on Care Opinion on 4/04/2025 at 9:54 AM

picture of Kellie Blyth

Dear hotelft58,

Thank you for taking the time to submit your feedback.

I was upset to read about the way a staff member interacted with your child by taking the pizza directly out of their mouth. This is behaviour clearly not in line with the high standards we set ourselves at the Peel Health Campus. I offer a full and unreserved apology to you and your child for any distress caused.

I am pleased to tell you that we are in the process of becoming an accredited sunflower member with the Hidden Disabilities Sunflower Initiative. More information about this initiative can be found on their website here: https://hdsunflower.com/au. We are also working to implement a Disability Health Profile form that will allow treating clinicians, carers and family members to record accurate and thorough information about a presenting persons disability that staff can refer to in assisting them provide care to our consumers. Thank you for your suggestions around ways to identify when a person is neurodiverse or has a hidden disability. I hope you can see that the things we are implementing above are very much in line with what you are suggesting and that we are moving forward in the right direction.

Your feedback will also be discussed at our bi-monthly Disability Access and Inclusion Committee meeting to explore whether there are further areas for development or improvement in this space.

I am happy to read that all your experience wasn’t negative and that you had several positive interactions with numerous staff. It was excellent to hear about staff members providing development and counselling to other staff members. I think this highlights the work going on in the disability field and the commitment we have to improving care we provide for people with neurodiversity or hidden disabilities in the community.

Again, thank you for providing feedback about our health service.

Kind Regards,

Kellie Blyth

Executive Director

  • {{helpful}} {{helpful == 1 ? "person thinks" : "people think"}} this response is helpful

Update posted by hotelft58 (a parent/guardian)

Thank you for the reply Kellie, my suggestion about making something visible is for the nurses who may not know the patient is neurodiverse. The nurse that walks past and gets asked a question, the nurse who gets asked to perform a task like in our case moving my child to main ED who had not had a discussion/handover. I would hate for the staff to miss the mark and security gets involved due to an unidentified error.

While all other staff were respectful and asked questions so I believe Peel hospital is going in the right direction.

I look forward to seeing the Sunflower initiative as well as the health profile if we end up at Peel again.

Again thank you

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