‘Heart spray taken, patient aids rationed’

The aged-care royal commission has been told of patient neglect by home residents.

Senior counsel assisting the commission Peter Gray said he believed the commissioners would find the level of physical restraint used on Mr Reeves ‘wholly inappropriate, unjustifiable on any view and (that it) really is quite a serious level of mistreatment’.

A nursing home resident had her crucial heart medication spray taken from her for “three or four days” when she asked for a replacement and has told the royal commission about the rationing of incontinence pads.

Darryl Melchhart, 90, told the aged care royal commission in Sydney yesterday that without the Glyceryl Trinitrate (GTN) spray for angina, she “could have heart failure and die, or I could go to hospital”.

Ms Melchhart said she was instructed to carry the spray with her at all times to use if her condition flared up and had some in her purse while she gave evidence at the commission.

In wide-ranging evidence, the elderly woman also described being attacked by other residents with dementia while using her walker and highlighted the ­“rationing” of incontinence pads.

At one stage, Ms Melchhart said, she understood she was allowed only three a day, but this changed after she complained.

The situation has not changed for others who did not speak up, however.

“A friend … she saw I had some pads that I’d just been given in my little basket underneath my wheeler and she said ‘I haven’t got any, and that’s why I didn’t come up to the happy hour the other day’,” Ms Melchhart said.

“I would have liked to have given her one but I thought no, she’ll have to fight for herself. She’s got three daughters but they don’t come in very often.”

The commission heard evidence about the reported case of Garden View Aged Care, which took in a 72-year-old man called Terrence Reeves in May last year for about two months’ of respite care.

Having gone in relatively mobile, the commission heard, he left in a “severely deconditioned state with very limited mobility”.

Senior counsel assisting the commission Peter Gray said he believed the commissioners would find the level of physical restraint used on Mr Reeves “wholly inappropriate, unjustifiable on any view and (that it) really is quite a serious level of mistreatment”.

Another resident from a different facility, Merle Mitchell, also gave evidence yesterday that she was told some severe pain about which she’d complained was “all in your head”.

“My friends happened to be here one day when I was trying to get out of bed and one of them said, ‘If you don’t get Merle to hospital, you will be guilty of elder abuse’,” she told the inquiry.

“And then one of them disappeared and within half an hour the ambulance was here and, sure enough, I had a crushed disc and a broken back. So that meant I had another three weeks in hospital and three weeks of physio.”

Eresha Dilum Dassanayake was called to give evidence about the experience of her 87-year-old mother — who was not named — after a visit to hospital when doctors recommended she no longer be administered opioid patches.

Ms Dassanayake found one on her mother during a visit. “I emailed to say please note it says no more opioid patches to be applied and to revert back to Panadol three times a day,” she told the inquiry. “And the response was, ‘I’m sorry about that, we had an agency nurse — they must have done it’.”

The royal commission hearings continue in Sydney today.