Two Tasmanian women whose parents were both residents at the facility say they were pushed to have their father prescribed the drug because they suspect his ability to walk around and resistance to care was posing an issue for staff.
Over 35 minutes, 68-year-old UQ and her sister US – both of whom declined to appear on camera – detailed how their parents, Quakers from the US Midwest, had moved to Australia in 1963 and in 2004, purchased a unit in the Vaucluse Gardens Retirement Village next to Bupa South Hobart.
After their mother passed away from bowel cancer aged 89 after eight days in the aged care facility in 2011, their father declined until he eventually moved into The Court at the facility in November 2013 aged 92 after a mini-stroke.
In many ways, the sisters’ complaints about the facility were almost a ‘carbon copy’ of the evidence given by the other two direct experience witnesses in the case study, Diane Daniels and Merridy Eastman, namely:
- Carers taking a long time to respond to care needs
- Incontinence pads being left around their father’s room
- Clothes going missing or being shrunk or other people’s clothes being placed in his wardrobe
- Hip protectors not being supplied
- Staff spending minimal time with their father
- Massages and physiotherapy not happening
“They may seem insignificant but they were difficulties that we found,” UQ told Counsel Assisting Eliza Bergin (pictured above).
A family conference in February 2014 led to the facility promising to implement improvements, but the sisters said it was hard to tell if these happened because they were never witnessed.
Seeking more care for their father, the family was encouraged to move him into the high-care unit at The Lodge, where there was one staff member for every five residents – once moved however, the sisters realised this was over two levels.
In 2017, after their father took to walking over to The Court to sit near the room where their mother had died and to visit another resident, the Care Manager at the Lodge then suggested their father be prescribed Risperidone.
Consulting their brother, a consultant psycho-geriatrician, the sisters say he said the dose recommended was too high and labelled it “behavioural euthanasia”.
“He did tell us that basically it would kill off his current behaviours, so both the challenging behaviours and the loving behaviours, the whole thing, by rendering our father sort of semi-conscious, I suppose and possibly immobile,” UQ said.
Ultimately, the Care Manager suggested calling in Dementia Support Australia (DSA) who recommended a range of measures including massage, aromatherapy and staff training (and not forcing him to do tasks he didn’t want to).
Finally, in September 2018, their father contracted pneumonia and began receiving palliative are through his private GP.
Breaking down, UQ recalled an incident in which she couldn’t find an RN to administer her father’s medication for a couple of hours, leaving him agitated and in pain.
“I was just so upset that there wasn’t more careful attention to his needs,” said UQ. “Bupa knew that he was in a palliative situation and they weren’t checking on him.”
Another common thread throughout the Bupa case study.
