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🇦🇺 Australia /Health & Science

Toowoomba Hospital Maternity Review Fails to Address Mother’s Concerns

From ABC Australia · () English

Translated from English and summarized by DistantNews. Read the original for the full story.

At a glance

News Named sources Under investigation
  • Ashleigh Hills says a traumatic birth and missed medical problems affected her first months with her newborn son.
  • A five-page summary of an independent review found continuing shortcomings in the hospital’s complaints process and said 117 recommendations remained in progress.
  • Darling Downs Health chief executive Annette Scott called it unacceptable for complaints to go unanswered and said the service needed to learn from them.

Ashleigh Hills says a traumatic birth took away much of the joy of her son’s first weeks, and she remains affected every day. She is among the mothers who took part in an assurance review of Toowoomba Hospital’s maternity unit after years of complaints about its services.

It's something I'm still dealing with every day.

· Ashleigh HillsHills described the lasting effect of her traumatic birth.

Hills said doctors sent her home last year after telling her she was not yet in labour. She spent the next 24 hours at home before returning to the hospital, where doctors performed an emergency caesarean section. They found a rare condition known as Bandl’s ring, in which a constriction formed around her baby, Austin.

“Everyone was yelling. It was just really scary, and there’s no chance for anyone to explain if I’m OK, if baby’s OK,” Hills said. She later noticed a lump on her son’s head. Hospital staff assessed it several times, but a general practitioner confirmed when Austin was two weeks old that he had a fractured skull. Hills also said her own pre-eclampsia went undetected by the emergency department.

Everyone was yelling. It was just really scary, and there's no chance for anyone to explain if I'm OK, if baby's OK.

· Ashleigh HillsShe recalled the emergency during her son’s birth.

The five-page summary released this week examined the hospital’s response to five previous reviews dating back to 2018. Queensland Health commissioned the latest review in February, focusing on how the maternity unit handled complaints. It found that progress was under way, but several longstanding problems remained unresolved.

I don't want that on my watch at all.

· Annette ScottScott reacted to failures in the hospital’s complaints process.

Darling Downs Health chief executive Annette Scott said the hospital was acting on 117 recommendations and described improvement as a continuing process. She said the review identified deficits in the complaints system. “If things are getting lost then we need to learn from that because that is not fair on them,” Scott said. Hills said she finally secured a meeting with the hospital when Austin was seven months old, after several unsuccessful attempts. “It just would have been nice to have felt listened to,” she said.

If things are getting lost then we need to learn from that because that is not fair on them.

· Annette ScottScott said the hospital needed to address complaints that were not followed up.
About this summary

Originally published by ABC Australia in English. Translated, summarized, and contextualized automatically by DistantNews, with a note on how the source frames the story. Not individually reviewed before publishing. How this works.

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