"Local health nurse station"

I had a chainsaw go through my leg, I went up to our local nurses station to stop it from bleeding so I could drive to Albany to get it repaired and stitched up. No one was there, the nurse was out. We have a phone system on the outside of the office, I pushed the button and I got health direct. I wanted to know if the nurse was in town, they took my details and then the phone went dead. I had to go to a local ambulance office so they could patch it.

We have had similar experiences in the past. In my opinion, the nurses are brilliant but the system is disgusting. I went there more recently and the nurse informed me they are going on leave, which is okay because they need a break, but there is no one rostered on while they're away. I understand that when they're back from their leave they have got to cover for other staff at other locations, so we might be 20-30 days without a nurse in our town. There’s a few of us in town who have had accidents, a few of us have had heart attacks etc. and there’s seemingly no service available. Our closest other nurse station is about 70km away, or you’ve got to drive about 140km to Albany. To go somewhere else to get it sorted is not really an option.

It’s become a holiday area over there in the other town, they have a nurse and nurse practitioner, and other areas do too. We are here by ourselves and I understand the accident rate is going up. I believe the nurse would have been happy to come in if someone had rung them, but health direct didn’t seem to pass the message on.

I believe the health direct staff member had enough information to do something about it. The nurse had a phone that went through the call system, but now it goes through health direct and I gave them all my details before the phone cut out so I don’t see why they didn’t then follow up with contacting the district nurse.