Netcare Olivedale does not care for patients - only cares about profits

Netcare Olivedale does not care for patients

It has been exactly one month since I was discharged from the Netcare Private Hospital in Olivedale, Randburg after spending a week there in high care being treated for COVID pneumonia. Although medically, I may have been healed but the emotional scars caused by the terrible and less than human treatment that was meted on me will take a long time to heal. It seems to me that the terrible treatment by most nurses and the systematic starving was designed to break my spirit – and I paid R90,000for the week’s stay for it. Netcare Olivedale does not care for its patients – it only cares about profits.

Only 2 out of 14 nurses that were assigned to me showed any Ubuntu and adherence to the Nurses Ethics Code and I take my hat off for them: a Tsonga lady and one Zulu lady. To those two nurses, I say thank you ladies for honouring the true calling of your profession. I just can’t recognise them because their faces were always fully protected by the PPE.

I was admitted on 11th of June with Covid pneumonia, after waiting for 2 hours to find a bed in any of the Sandton and Fourways private hospitals. Because the Netcare Olivedale itself had not finished constructing its Covid ward, I was received and treated for 2 days in a 3-bed leukaemia ward. I was hooked onto oxygen, connected to the ECG monitor, attached to an automatic blood pressure monitor that measured blood pressure every hour and had a “Christmas tree” like drip system inserted into my neck to allow for direct application of various medications. All of these connections resulted in limited ability to move. Blood samples were taken every morning at 04:00 through a dedicated pipe connected to an artery around my wrist. Unfortunately, for some strange reason, the lab guys could not properly operate the simple valve system, which meant that more often than not, each time they came to take samples, blood would end up splashed all over the floor. On a couple of occasions, they ended up injecting me in a different place to take the sample.

To be able to go to the loo, I needed a nurse to come and disconnect me, which proved to be a serious irritation for my caregivers because they had to “suit up” in full personal protective gear each time they came into the room and take all of it off when they left the room. But, what else could I do, I was immobile? On the 3rd day, without warning, the nurses just walked in and told me I was being moved to another ward because “there is another patient that needs the emergency equipment.” “Why am I the one being moved and why did the doctor not tell me I was going to be moved?” The simple answer I got was “you can ask the doctor when he comes to see you.” With all my personal belongings stuffed in a yellow medical waste plastic bag and put on me on the bed, drips and all, I was bundled out of the leukaemia ward into a high care ward. I thought that was the only move but I was wrong. After spending a day of terrible treatment in this high care ward, at around 17:30, the nurses again just rocked up and started unhooking me from my medical support connections, my personal prison, and told me “you are being again to another ward,” which turned out to be newly converted 20patients’ Covid-19 ward.

That was to be the start of my worst nightmare. Firstly, the construction crew was still making finishing touches to the ward, meaning that they were still making installations in some of the rooms. The nurse that brought me from the high care ward was getting ready to knock off. Because the electric supply for the medical equipment had not been switched on, the nurse left me with the drips, ECG, oxygen, automatic blood pressure equipment not connected. This resulted in blood flowing back into all the lines that were connected to me, clotting and blocking them. It was only at 21:30 after raising the alarm for a long time that a nurse finally came to ask “what are looking for Mr. Gumede? We were still attending to other patients.”

There were only 3 of us there and three nurses plus a nursing sister! Eventually I got hooked up and finally got to have my meagre dinner: two thin slices of dry brown bread, with nothing in between, with tea. Throughout my stay there, it was like I was being done a favour when I was given those two slices of brown bed with tea. Ordinarily, we were supposed to have dinner “if you can call a s**** of mash potato, a small portion of vegetables and a small portion of meat, meant for a 5-year old” served at 17:30dinner. Because I am diabetic, I was meant to have a snack for people who are diabetic around 21:00 but I would be lucky to even have two dry slices of brown bread. I lost 5 kilograms and only went to the loo once in the 7 days, having paid R90,000 for the 7 days and nights at this hospital!

My doctor was no different either. He treated me like an imbecile, deciding not to give me any information relating to my condition or progress with my treatment. If it was not for another pulmonologist who happened to a friend of a friend who was working at the same hospital, I would not have known what they were doing to me, what medication they had administered and why and how I was progressing. All I was seeing was my diabetes, which had been in control for years now, running away with me – my sugar level moving from a normal 5.5 mmol/L to 20mmol/L.

I am grateful that I received appropriate treatment and survived Covid pneumonia, when others do not but I will never forget the terrible treatment meted out to me by the majority of the nurses that attended to me. It all left a bitter taste in my mouth. I couldn’t help but feel that the hospital was more interested in maximising income from my hospitalisation, by making me stay more days there then necessary so that they could claim more money from the medical aid. It seems to me that, for Netcare, Covid-19 has only presented an opportunity to rake in profits. To me, Netcare does not care!