hkaussie, I would say exactly the same - however, from numerous stays in QMH, I can say pretty certainly that the treatment dished out to non-Chinese is very different. If my husband was there for 5 minutes past visiting hours, he was told to get out, let the local patients had people coming and going at all hours, with no questions asked.
The lack of communication is staggering - and it's not because of 'the way they do things' - it's because of an overwheling attitude amongst staff that Western = spoiled and rich. On several occasions I got asked questions like "Why aren't you at Matilda?" (because we couldn;t afford it in a million years), "Why don't you ask your helper to do it?" (We didn;t have one), or the best one was when the doctor came around with a group of students, didn't ven look at me - just pulled off my blanket and started talking to the students. I was quite upset at this, and I noticed that when the students visited every other patient in the room (all Chinese) - he would speak a few words first. He spoke excellent English - he just couldn't be bothered.
When you sign your baby into special care, you sign a form that says the hospital then decides what happens. I had to fight two peds to tel me why my child had a dozen blood tests in half an hour, why he was still in the SCU give nights after his 24 hour jaundice treatment had finished: I found out at the end that they were taking extra blood for 'stud' - which I wouldn't have minded if it was one extra prick - but it was more like a dozen. They also kept him up there becasue the 'paperwork' was too 'complicated' to transfer him back to the ob ward. Yet the Chinese lady in teh next bed, whose daughter also had 24 hour jaundice treatment, was back the next day. Go figure. I read his chart - nothing else to keep him up there but laziness on the part of staff.
What was worse - I complained and complained about pain in my IV site(s). One nurse told me to "be quiet - cannot hurt so much". I had a severe infection, and still have a numb patch on that wrist -nearly three years later. The last 36 hours I was in hospital, I didn't get to speak to a doctor about it, and the nurses refused to call someone. I was discharged with a fever, and red line up my arm from the infection. I was at the private GP's ASAP for the medication I should have been prescribed before I left.
The standard of care is great for surgery - for medicine and after care, it is simply shocking. But for those of us who cannot afford the fees for private hospitals, (or who simply need a level of surgical care which only the public system can provide) - there is no other option.
At my sic week check up, the doctor basically called me a liar - that if I had an infection, they would have noticed and taken care of it. What a load of c**p.
So if we have a second, I will go back to QMH, but I will be out of the minute I can be, and go to get checked out by doctors who fulfil ALL their professional obligations.
Harsh - but true!
