‘Keep healthy people’
To quote journalist Harriet Alexander’s piece in The Sydney Morning Herald last week – ‘ Bega Orthopaedic surgeon Chris Phoon makes no bones about his solution when a pair of surgical bolt cutters snapped during an operation to take the steel pin out of a patient’s leg.
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He went to a local hardware store and bought a pair of bolt cutters for $200.’
The reason he did that was because there was an equipment replacement shortage within the South East Regional Hospital and neighbouring hospitals including Canberra Hospital.
It reminds me of my husband Ted’s last few years in and out of hospital and my frustrated care for him while there.
Having had two good careers first as a registered nurse and then as an interior designer I took the task of solving hospital equipment shortages to heart.
Visiting Ted early one morning I noted his catheter bag lying somewhere under his bed on the floor.
Naturally I flipped and advised in my best icy sister in Charge tones that my husband had sufficient health impediments without adding ascending bladder infection due to sloppy care.
‘We only have three catheter bag holders per ward, and they’re all being used.’ I was told.
‘Why so few?’ I asked. ‘Oh, they’re around $185’ was the reply.
So I rocked off to the fabulous $2 shop in Bong Bong Street and bought a pack of four S hooks. Two of these I threaded through Ted’s catheter bag and then hooked them over the rounded rungs of his bed frame.
As a designer I appreciated that the S hooks had a plastic cap to prevent paintwork being scraped.
In due course I submitted my equipment shortage/design solution to the hospital CEO with a gift pack of $2 S hooks, to less than Ab Fab acclaim.
What’s wrong with the fabulous multifunctional splendiferously inexpensive S hook for goodness sake? Just good common sense hey?
Anyway, recently I attended the Public Health First ‘Save Bowral Hospital’ public meeting, which has brought all these ridiculous and tragic health care issues right up front in my mind. Try to keep healthy people, cos it may be the cavalry is running the other way…