REMEMBER WHEN

GOLD COAST BULLETIN, SATURDAY OCTOBER 1, 2005

A RIVIERA worker whose foot was impaled on a power drill bit was kept waiting 24 hours at Gold Coast Hospital before surgeons removed it.

Michael Pierce, then 31, of Reedy Creek said that although he was on a morphine drip he awoke ‘every half hour or so’ with pain in his left foot, with the drill bit and a piece of the fibreglass boat hull, weighing 1.8kg, still attached to his foot.

“They told me there was this trauma case that had priority and then they just kept coming in and I waited,” he said.

“I can understand if it was life and death, but I still think 24 hours is pretty rough and, even if my life was not threatened, I was still in heaps of pain.

“Even the smallest knock on my bed and this terrible pain just shot right through me.’’

Mr Pierce said he spent about six hours in the accident and emergency ward and was then taken to a standard ward.

His brother Andrew said the family could understand a wait of five or six hours, but not 24.

“This is Third World stuff,” said Andrew.

“He would have been better off in somewhere like Banda Aceh.

“It’s just disgusting he had to wait so long.”

A Gold Coast Hospital spokeswoman said there had been a ‘high number of trauma cases presenting at the hospital in recent days’.

“It is regrettable that some patients may have experienced delays due to the demand,’’ she said.

“The clinicians are the most appropriate people to manage the workload and prioritise emergency cases.” Mr Pierce said he was very lucky that the drill bit had missed all his bones