QEH doctor assaulted when masked slapped into face
An emergency doctor was pushed to the limit as a gallivanting father pulled his mask and snapped it into his face, a court heard.
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A drunk Seaton father’s adverse reaction to a lengthy wait in the emergency department has landed him a prison sentence.
Jose Catarino Gouveia, 27, yanked an emergency department doctor’s mask and flicked it back into his face upon being told to leave the hospital when he was playing on wheelchairs reserved for ill patients.
Gouveia on Friday pleaded guilty in the Port Adelaide Magistrates Court to assaulting the doctor in August last year.
When Gouveia flicked the mask, he was wrestled to the ground by the doctor who defined the incident as “the last straw” as it was “one of a number of incidents he’s been involved in” when he had been assaulted at work.
The court heard Gouveia believing the hospital was not delivering “adequate care” after he had “waited several hours” to be seen.
Caroline Tassone, for Gouveia, said his agitation had stemmed from a “heightened state of emotion” as a result of an ailment the person he was assisting was suffering.
“He demanded to see the doctor to ask what was going on,” Ms Tassone told Magistrate Jayanthi Pandya.
“When the doctor attended them they told him it would be a further wait.
“In (Gouveia’s) mind he thought it was quite serious and he thought they should be seen immediately.
“He’s then grabbed the mask and flung it back in the doctor’s face.
“We state that was at the much lower end of the scale.”
Gouveia had a nine-month suspended sentence hanging over his head for assaulting his partner.
Mr Tassone said, after assaulting the doctor, Gouveia was sedated and placed on to a bed in the hospital alongside the person he was assisting.
“It is only when he causes such a fuss and this happens that they’re both taken to emergency,” she said.
But Ms Pandya was condemning of Gouveia and Ms Tassone’s submissions.
“I’m not sure what message that sends,” she said.
“Bad behaviour will get a response?”
Ms Pandya said Gouveia’s actions were serious and not, in fact, on the “lower end of the scale”.
“Can you imagine what it’s like for emergency doctors having to care for people even when they’re in the state that you presented yourself in?,” she said.
“Other patients who go to an emergency department are distressed and ill (and are there) as a last resort, then have to encounter people like (Gouveia).
“(You were) behaving in a manner that is entirely inappropriate, is worrying, is concerning (and) is distressing for people who are sitting there waiting to be treated.”
Ms Pandya activated Gouveia’s suspended sentence and handed him another seven months behind bars for the assault on the doctor.
In total, for both offences, Gouveia was sentenced to 16 months and one week in jail with a non-parole period of 11 months.
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