The Royal Commission into Aged Care Quality and Safety has travelled to Darwin where more examples of the gross care failures resulting from missed care, poor practice and lack of appropriate staffing and skills mix have come to light.
Retired nurse Lyndall Fowler presented disturbing evidence of her mother being ‘left to deteriorate’ in a NSW nursing home, presenting graphic images of foot wounds to demonstrate the facility’s failure to facilitate access to a specialist to treat wounds on her feet.
Despite citing several examples of missed care—which also included failing to clean up food spillage from her mother’s clothes and not adjusting her diet properly according to her needs—Ms Fowler fervently defended the aged care workers who administered her care.
“The aged care workers who care for my mother — and who do really actually care — they are in a difficult position, trying to provide the best they can in less than ideal circumstances,” Lyndall Fowler told the Royal Commission this week.
“If the pay of people doing the important and challenging work of caring for the most vulnerable people in society like my mother … is less than someone serving hamburgers at McDonald’s, what does that say about our society?”
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