The 12 days of Christmas Surgical Services Edition 1.0
As the sole consumer representative here today, I have been asked to share my wish list for what I feel would improve the surgical services patient experience. So, considering the time of year it is, and in no particular order of priority and containing no flocks of birds like in the original, here’s my version of The 12 days of Christmas – the Surgical Services Edition. And no, I won’t be singing it, because I only wrote it this morning and didn’t have time to make it rhyme.
- Better communication, both ways, with GP’s. Respect the GP’s role in your patient’s life, trust that their knowledge of your patient runs deeper than your finite perspective through your specialty lens and brief interactions with them, especially since half the time you’re with us we’re having a good general anaesthetic induced sleep.
- Trust your female patients when they tell you they’re in pain and treat and medicate it appropriately. Trust me, most of us have experienced pain at levels that would leave men whimpering in bed, while we’re out here going about our daily lives of work and caring for family. So when a woman feels something is bad enough to present to emergency or get a referral to a surgeon, trust her when she says it hurts!!
- Can we have more Nurse Navigators to support new patients and those with complex needs, as the often Qld Health Public Hospital system isn’t always user friendly.
- Alongside Nurse Navigators, I’d love to see educated Peer Workers with Lived Experience embedded in the hospital workforce, to help patients and carers navigate the system, support them when accessing appointments if they wish, be a shoulder to cry on when needed and to help them interpret the jargon and understand their diagnosis and what steps to take next, with the aim that this will lead to less stress and better health outcomes for patients. If Mental Health, Indigenous Health and now Maternity Services can embrace the value of peer workers, then so can surgical and medical services.
- A Qld Health App that manages all my patient needs in one place, so I can log into to see my referrals and how they’re progressing, be offered appointments, confirm them or request reschedules, and that syncs with my phone’s calendar app, so that all my appointments are automatically loaded into my calendar with reminders set.
- The ability to have multiple appointments booked for the same day and preferably not with massive gaps between them. Whether patients are travelling in from a regional area for appointments, have to arrange childcare or time off work to attend, or they have a chronic illness or disability that makes getting here difficult, let’s find a way to make it easier for them to access their appointments on the same day.
- Ensure that you and your surgical team are aware of your patient’s allergies. We get asked to recite them all a bazillion times from the moment we enter the hospital to moments before entering the operating theatre, so PLEASE make sure you know them too. Trust me, removing micropore off my quickly blistering skin on my nether regions several times post-op this past couple of years has not been fun!!
- Roll out programs like PODDS and SRAU at all hospitals in QLD that offer surgical services, as they’re so valuable in streamlining surgical admissions at the front end of the consumer experience and reducing post-op complications and readmissions through ED at the back end, as we’d prefer to not be frequent flyers in the ED due to lack of support post-operatively.
- Can we make it so we don’t need to sell a kidney to afford parking at public hospitals?!
- More awareness of the special needs of neurodiverse patients and the ability for ED’s, wards and operating theatres to try to accommodate the communication and sensory needs of these consumers. It doesn’t take much to ask us our needs and make small adjustments to help reduce sensory overwhelm, which in turn can then reduce our anxiety and make it easier for us to stay calm, and it generally improves our communication, as we’re not so internally distracted then by what we’re feeling and can concentrate on you and your questions.
- More singing surgeons. 10 hospitalisations and 7 surgeries in 21 months at the Mater and I still haven’t had the pleasure of meeting Dr Muduioa, so the only solution is that Qld Health needs to fund singing lessons for more of you. Seriously though, I know many surgeons listen to music when operating, so maybe give patients the option to choose to have some music playing when they’re heading into theatre, before they’re sedated, as it can help ease our anxieties and give us something else to focus on.
- Admit when you don’t know what’s wrong with us, rather than tell us there’s nothing wrong with us. Let’s stop medical gaslighting! Just because you can’t work it out, doesn’t mean it’s not happening.
As I walked into the Mater Hospital yesterday for my post-op check up with my surgeon, I noticed David William’s lovely Reconciliation Action Plan artwork, that features the statement “The Heart to Heal, the Strength to Grow”, and it got me thinking that it’s not just strength that’s needed to grow, but vulnerability, because until we can allow ourselves to be vulnerable enough to admit we don’t know everything; own that our actions may have caused harm to others, whether intentionally or through ignorance and lack of education; and be willing to open our minds to another’s perspective and experience, we can’t truly grow as people, organisations or as a society.
So as the solo consumer representative standing here with you all today, I ask that as 2024 rounds out and you hopefully get some time to reflect on the year that’s been and the upcoming New Year, you make a resolution to be willing to be more vulnerable in 2025, and take the opportunity to learn from everyone around you, not just those you consider your mentors and peers.