No sporting chance for unlucky elderly
A lot more wrong with our country than cricketers’ misdeeds
WHILE the country raged over Australian cricket’s ball-tampering scandal this week, spare a thought for the elderly patient restrained by a sheet to her hospital bed by a callous nurse.
It wasn’t a big story, assigned to the lower half of the inside pages while cricket continued to dominate the national headlines.
Here she was, a 100-year-old suffering from a suspected urinary tract infection, tied to her bed by the nurse assigned to care for her.
The case stemmed from an incident at a hospital in the Dandenong region last year, when a female nurse working a 12-hour overnight casual shift was assigned to the extremely unwell elderly woman on a one-to-one basis.
A tribunal hearing was told a doctor, who visited the ward about 3.30am, found the distressed patient lying on her side with her arms bound to the bed rail and asking to go to the toilet.
The doctor claimed when he confronted the nurse she responded that she was “just too tired”. The horrified medic told the hearing he untied the patient, informed the ward charge nurse and filed a written report.
Not only was the nurse allowed to complete her shift following the incident, but the matter was not reported by Monash Health officials to the Australian Health Practitioners Authority until six weeks later.
Once informed, the authority moved quickly to suspend the nurse’s registration, pending further inquiries.
She opposed her suspension and applied to the Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal (VCAT) for a review.
At a hearing earlier this month, the nurse strongly denied restraining the elderly patient and offered various accounts of how the woman came to be “entangled in the sheets”. In a ruling this week, a panel of three VCAT members expressed concerns about the nurse’s evidence.
“We were satisfied the restraint of the patient was both un- necessary and that the restraint applied was in an unacceptable form,” they ruled.
Yet despite these findings, VCAT said the nurse “did not pose a serious risk to patients” and set aside her suspension, leaving her free to return to work.
Why on earth would any reasonably-thinking person not realise that a nurse tying a 100year-old patient to her bed might pose a serious risk to other elderly patients coming into her care?
There are other questions that remain unanswered.
How long was she tied to her bed? Had it happened before? What if the doctor had not arrived and released her when he did?
Would she have remained bound there for hours until the next shift came on?
Where were her rights as a human being and at what point did she relinquish them?
Where was the respect and care to which she was entitled?
I understand there are times when patients need to be restrained to prevent them harming themselves or others, but according to the tribunal, this was not the case.
And you have to ask yourself if this nurse would ever have considered tying a younger patient to a bed. Of course not!
Younger patients can speak out, defend themselves, know their rights and are not afraid to voice them.
Not so the elderly, who whether in aged care or hospitals seem increasingly fearful of repercussions should they dare to speak out about instances of ill treatment and/or neglect.
It also amazes me that at a time when we have endless numbers of groups fighting passionately against all the injustices in the world, there isn’t one single group fighting for the rights of our elderly.
So forgive me but while I too was ashamed of our cricketers’ actions, it didn’t come within a bull’s roar of the shame I felt at the indignity and disgraceful treatment visited on this helpless centenarian who deserved way better.
We as a nation continue to fail our older Australians at every turn.
As for the nurse concerned in this case, I’d suggest a change in careers. You, madam, are not a nurse’s bootstrap!