It was November 26 2022 when instead of dyeing my hair I went out for lunch.
It was a beautiful sunny day so I had to take advantage as the next day was going to rain heavily all day.
I came back from my fave place to luncheon in Cowes and was trying to get my westie dog Tillsy Off the Scooter.
Normally she’d be happy to oblige but not this particular day.
Typical westie stubbornness, she would not budge.
So I stepped up to get off my mobility scooter and because I didn’t turn it off first, the scooter moved forward and I dove sideways and screamed blue murder at the top of my lungs.
Thankfully I have the best neighbours on the planet as they came out to see what was happening.
I immediately asked someone to call an ambulance.
Then gave my front door key to another neighbour and asked her to pack a bag for me.
As for my Tillsy, she came and gave me kisses and stayed with me until the MICA unit arrived to assess me before the ambulance arrived and took me to Dandenong Hospital.
Turns out I broke my left hip in 4 places and fractured my left shoulder at the same time after a very heavy fall.
Five days after my operation at Dandenong Hospital I was given a bed in the newly built section of Casey Hospital which houses the rehabilitation ward.
I arrived on Saturday 3 December 2022 in the afternoon and upon arrival I was greeted by the nurse in charge for the day.
She warmly greeted me onto the ward and showed me into my room.
She then proceeded to tell me I could order anything in and it would be brought in to me. This included food.
And if I did order in food that needed refrigeration, they would keep it in the fridge for me until I asked for it. Wow!
I’ve always had a great amount of respect for nurses and have had a basic understanding of how hard they work from the couple of short stays I’ve had in hospital.
But this time around I’ve been in hospital for two months in total and wow they are hard working beautiful dedicated souls.
Very special people with a calling for caring at the highest and deepest level.
During my stay at Casey Hospital, more particularly in the rehabilitation ward I saw and was attended to by men and women on all levels of nursing from placement, trainees to fully qualified nursing staff who go about their daily duties with a smile on their face, a happy disposition and a professionalism beyond words.
With keeping this in mind now think of what it’s like to work when you’re short staffed.
This puts pressure on the the nurses who were able to make it into work.
Our hospitals still adhere to Covid rules insofar as when a member of staff gets a cold – regardless of it being Covid or just a cold, they are required to stay home.
Hence one way our hospitals have staff shortages.
Other things that make our nurses jobs difficult is a whole range of things including running out of equipment such as pads, pull ups and wipes just to name a few.
It’s the little things like these that can make for a very long, hard and frustrating day for our essential frontline workers.
Then there are the difficult patients.
Before Covid the majority of patients were nice with maybe one or two difficult ones only.
Nowadays it’s very much the opposite.
This has been the case since the surgence of Covid and it doesn’t appear to be going away anytime soon.
Nurses DO NOT deserve the vitriol they receive.
They understand more than you know how hard it is for you not to be able to see your loved one, or if your loved one can only have one visitor at a time with 2 visitors being the maximum for the
day.
They understand the hardship this creates for both their patients and their patients family members.
But until we have this Covid under more control (which we don’t) then we need to be more empathetic and stop thinking about only ourselves.
We are all in this same nightmare experience.
We need to treat each other with respect and dignity and remember all the workers on the frontline, in this instance the nurses are working above and beyond with what little they have.
The really don’t need any outside pressure from selfish, ungrateful people who think they are owed the world for nothing in return.
Now let’s talk about management.
With nurses having to take time off due to illness or needing a mental health break due to being understaffed, management send out bulk SMS to all staff to find someone to fill in for a shift that was previously filled but due circumstances listed above and other, now needs filling.
This can often feel like a guilt trip to many nurses and they are fed up.
And the remaining nurses who turned up for their shift are given multiple patient buzzers instead of having just the 1 per nurse.
They are tired and often exhausted and often work under extreme conditions but they rarely complain.
They just keep giving the best of themselves and caring the absolutely for their patients.
And I reiterate again, these problems are across ALL hospitals including private as well as public.
I’d like to end this article on a positive note and bring everyone’s attention to a very special group of hard-working people who will often go unnoticed but who are just as important to the running of our hospitals.
Ward staff work behind the scenes in a large variety of duties including helping nurses with patients, from rolling them in bed to bringing the patient a cup of tea or coffee etc.
They transport patients from their rooms to other places in the hospital such as imaging and surgery etc.
They also clean the hospital, they will take a patient to the cafe and back if the patient wants.
This is just how beautiful they are.
Not only that but they are happy to do their job.
They love the interactions across the broadsheet of people they connect to from their fellow colleagues, patients, nurses etc.
They are always smiling.
Always wanting to see a patient smile and make them happy.
I count the ward staff equally as important and special in our hospital system as our nursing staff.
What I have written above is just my observation but it could be in any hospital across the state or even the whole of Australia.
Let’s please get back to treating each other with respect and kindness and remembering our basic manners.
It’s really not hard to say please and thank you.
Liza Lee
