Tragic tale with many victims

“Doctor too tired for golf ball victim”, “Doctor fears he was too tired at hospital”, “Flaws in care of girl hit by golf ball” – headlines referring to the tragic case of Vanessa Anderson, who died in Sydney’s Royal North Shore Hospital during a seizure two days after being hit by a golf ball.
With the inquest into the 16 year-old’s death in progress, the accusations have been flying thick and fast. If the newspaper reports are correct the case is another symptom of a system in trouble.
According to the Sydney Morning Herald, the court has heard that “Vanessa’s CT scan went missing; doctors and nurses failed to keep appropriate notes; a nurse did not tell anyone when Vanessa could not move and suffered memory loss a few hours before her death; and doctors involved in the case failed to tell each other when they changed her drugs”.
Furthermore, a postmortem revealed four times the therapeutic level of codeine in her blood and high levels of Endone, the paper said.
But perhaps the most telling report was a tiny newspaper report which claimed administrators had been warned the neurosurgical ward would be three doctors short at the time of Vanessa’s admission. I’m not sure what options the bureaucrats had to make ensure patient safety, but it sounds as if an unreasonable burden fell to a female intern on her eleventh neurosurgical shift.
She’s had her name and photo in the papers. She’s admitted making mistakes and she’s expressed her sympathy to the parents.
When I googled the case, the top entry made me cry.
It was Vanessa’s death notice:
Vanessa Anderson
Suddenly, late of Hornsby Heights.
Beautiful and cherished daughter of Michelle and Warren, loving sister of Amanda and Nathan. …
11.9.1989 - 8.11.2005 "Ness your legend"
Vanessa was just three days older than my own son, and I imagine her parents’ lives will never be the same.
Life, too, will have changed for those involved in her care.
And without wanting to preempt the coroner’s findings, it seems to me the system is largely made up o good people doing their best in a system that feels increasingly as if it’s going off the rails.

It’s coming from inside the hospital

The introduction of concentration camps into an argument is a sure sign the speaker is all out of reasonable arguments and the discussion is headed seriously downhill.
So this quote in a newspaper about the mandatory vaccination of health-workers probably shouldn’t be graced with a response, but having had seriously ill children in hospital, I can’t help myself.
“These are the sorts of [immunisation] tactics you would expect in concentration camps, not the sort of tactics you would expect in the Australian Health Care system”, said the president of the Australian Vaccination Network about a NSW Health policy that requires health workers to be immunised before they have contact with patients.
For those who don’t know, the Australian Vaccination Network (AVN), quoted high up in the newspaper story as if an expert medical organisation, is against immunisation, or in their own words believe “governments all over the world have abridged or denied the right to free choice when it comes to vaccinations and immunisations for our children or ourselves”.
I’ve spoken to some of their members on the phone in the past, and like many zealots, they’re well-intentioned but unfortunately firmly believe they’re doing the right thing by saving children from dangerous doctors and vaccinations.
Pictured alongside the newspaper article are a brother and sister who the journalist says are “paying the price of not being immunised”.
Andrew, 25, has had to drop out of a nursing degree and Esther, 19, has had to transfer from nursing to naturopathy.
Bravo, I say, unless they can prove natural immunity to all relevant diseases.
It’s a disgrace that NSW Health didn’t have this policy in place before, and I’d be interested to hear about the policies of other states.
Why on earth should the government allow patients in our hospitals to be treated by staff who might give them diseases such as pertussis, incidentally misspelt on the AVN site?
Further, I can’t see why this pair’s non-immunised parents should be allowed to work as nurses in private nursing homes among the vulnerable elderly.
Andrew claims the policy “takes away any choice I had”. Sorry Andrew, but no it doesn’t, it takes away your choice to work closely with sick people. And so it should.