Another negligent and uncaring public hospital in NSW (Australia)

Amy and Jo, daughters of the journalist Mike Willesee, were sure their mother was not depressed but that she was suffering from a serious undiagnosed medical condition. But Nepean Hospital medical staff failed to take a history from the women, despite their mother Carol, an accomplished stage actress, being in such a state she was unable to communicate, they told the Special Commission of Inquiry into acute care services in NSW yesterday. Carol Willesee had gone from a healthy active woman in June 2006, to within four months not being able to walk unassisted. She died in December 2006, aged 59, of the extremely rare neurological Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease.

Doctors had previously determined her problems were psychosomatic. Her daughters took her to a private psychiatric hospital in Richmond at the end of October 2006. "At that point we felt lost in the system because we had nowhere to go . plus we had the absolute terror that something was significantly wrong with her. She appeared to us to be dying," Amy Willesee said. Within days that hospital sent her by ambulance to Nepean Hospital's emergency department.

Amy Willesee told the inquiry the family became increasingly distressed during their mother's four-week stay at Nepean because they felt ignored by medical staff who did not speak to them at all about what their mother might be suffering from or what tests they were organising. She said she suspected that because her mother had come from a psychiatric hospital her condition was not being treated as medical. She had suspected her mother had the disease after researching her symptoms on the internet, but it was not until weeks after Carol was admitted that the doctors said they were investigating the possibility of CJD despite medical notes revealing later that it had been initially raised in emergency.

She said her mother was not adequately treated while at Nepean and the neurological team did not document many of the "frightening" symptoms she had witnessed, such as her arm being straight up in the air so stiff she could not pull it down. "It meant that Mum's pain and distress was never treated until she was diagnosed which was 23 days after her admission." The family never got to speak with her treating neurologist despite several requests and the junior doctor gave them scant information, she said. "Every day we would attempt to make contact with the specialist," she said. "We didn't ever meet the specialist."

She said family were not told of any tests being conducted and were not given the opportunity to ask questions. "We felt that she was just lying there dying," she said. Outside the inquiry she said: "At no time did any of the doctors at that hospital talk to us about what might be wrong with Mum".

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