RVH Barrie: Lack Of Quality Care and Availability of Supplies to Treat Patient Needs
A patient, who has recently finished treatment in Toronto for Cancer; is Tracheostomy and G-Tube dependent for breathing and feeding. He was recently rushed to RVH Barrie, Ontario by ambulance for issues of breathing, with the determination cause of pneumonia and Tracheostomy infection. Understandable, with the current state of the health care, we were aware that wait times would be lengthy. Despite this realization, he was placed in the hallway, for 17 plus hours (with little communication ability due to the tracheostomy) waiting until a room would be made available, with minimal care and support from staff. Upon being assigned to a room, his wife was allowed to accompany him and visit. Upon arriving at the hospital, staff had informed his wife that the hospital did not have adequate supplies for Tracheostomy care, and had sent them back home (by bus as she does not drive, and in the midst of a snowstorm) to garner tracheostomy supplies from their personal supplies to bring back to the hospital so that they could adequately change and treat the tracheostomy. Further to this, the patient was discharged with high blood pressure, and upon discharge, the hospital had provided prescriptions for antibiotics and blood pressure, which were meant to be swallowed and not crushed- which for a tracheostomy patient, who is G-Tube dependent is not possible to take orally. For a patient who was being treated and was visually seen and known to not be able to swallow, to provide a script for medication that they readily knew that the patient was not capable of taking orally, was negligent and incompetent on their behalf, thus resulting in further back and forth with the drug store, contact with the hospital and further delay in the patient receiving their required medication for issues of a severe nature. To further add to this ordeal, when admitted to the hospital, and being provided medication and feed through the G-Tube, the staff refused to flush the tube and provide proper care, which had resulted in the G-Tube becoming blocked/dislodged and leaking upon patient discharge from hospital. All this to say, the patient waited longer in the hallway to receive care, than they actually received care, and has now spent just as long arguing with pharmacy, and hospital to get the proper medications to treat an infection that could easily become life threatening given their medical state; and when they actually finally resolved their medication mix-up, they now need to present back to the hospital to have another G-Tube procedure to rectify an issue caused by improper care while they were admitted to the hospital in the first place. All the time while not being able to physically intake any antibiotics or blood pressure medication due to the constant errors and over-sight of the hospital staff. Truly unacceptable and frightening standards of care.