I’m a seasoned patient. I’ve spent significant periods of time in hospitals. But my week in hospital with COVID in January was like nothing I’d ever seen.
It was close to 10.30am on Thursday when, with one arm gripping a physiotherapist who was helping me walk, I nearly stepped in faeces and urine in the corridor of one of Victoria’s leading COVID-19 wards.
In the previous few days I’d heard Elena, a challenging patient, cry and beg for someone to help her to the toilet, which was metres from her bed.As the Omicron surge continues across the country, inside this hospital, a stretched and junior workforce is struggling amid chronic staff shortages to keep their heads above water in unbearable working conditions. Up to 7000 staff in Victoria are missing every day due to furloughing, and it shows.
I watched as a rushed, nervous young nurse dropped pills on the floor, before picking them up and giving them to me.“It’s my first day on the ward,” one young nurse told me, as she appeared to hold back tears. No one expects the public health system to operate like a hotel. You’re there to get better, not to have a good time. But when a doctor admitted that a junior staff member had needlessly attempted to draw blood from me, I started to feel unsafe.We ran out of drinking cups, so our medication was put in tiny cups.I was refused an MRI scan, ordered by a doctor, because staff said I was a COVID patient and they did not want me in the machine because they’d need to clean it afterwards.