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A woman says she was gripped by rage when she saw the pressure sores and a bone-deep leg wound her blind and deaf mum had after three months in a Victorian aged-care home.
The aged care royal commission has heard heart-breaking details about the final, pain-filled days of 87-year-old Bertha Aalberts, known to her family as Beth.
The Dutch post-war immigrant died in hospital in August last year after three falls, including one that left her with a broken arm.
She also developed chronic pressure sores and an unexplained bone-deep wound on her shin in three short months at the Avondrust Lodge in suburban Melbourne.
Her daughter Johanna Aalberts-Henderson says her mum entered the home as a cognisant and continent person, and while she had heart problems and was deaf and legally blind could still get around with the aid of a walker and walking stick.
But her decision to live at the lodge was the start of a rapid decline. Three months later she was dead.
Ms Aalberts-Henderson, who spent her life working as a nurse, says she’ll never forget the audible reaction of staff at a local hospital after her mother was taken there for treatment.
As a gauze dressing was removed from “a hole” in her mother’s shin nurses let out an audible gasp.
“I’ve worked in an operating theatre, I’ve been a nurse, but everybody in that room when ehhhhhh (gasp),” she said of the wound, which was 14 centimetres long.
“It was unbelievable to see … I was in an icy cold rage. How dare they.”
She said she made an immediate decision never to return her mother to the home, which she accused of failing to tell her about the increasing severity of her mother’s various sores.
She said her mum expressed relief, saying: “Good. They are mean to me.”
The daughter said that despite repeated requests for nursing home staff to regularly move her mum to prevent pressure sores, she never saw any evidence that was done.
She also saw no evidence that staff followed the advice of wound management experts to put her mum on nutritional supplements to aid her healing.
Ms Aalberts-Henderson told of showing up at the home one day, after the fall that broke her mother’s arm.
There she found her right-handed mother trying to eat soup, with her right arm still in a plaster cast.
“I said to this young girl ‘oh mum’s eating’, and she said ‘If you leave her long enough she’ll eat’. You don’t talk to somebody like that.”
She also said the home put her continent mother in adult diapers.
“One nurse just said ‘poo in your pants’, which was just so undignified for my very dignified mother.
“Putting a continent person into diapers, it vandalises them for what purpose? It’s inhumane. It seemed to be a staffing issue.”
A week after Mrs Aalberts died, the Aged Care Quality Agency audited the home and was unable to say it had enough skilled staff to provide appropriate care for dozens of high-care residents.
In January this year, after the agency audit and after the royal commission was called, the home dramatically increased nurse numbers and nursing hours.
Officers from MiCare Ltd, which operates the home, are giving evidence at the inquiry on Monday afternoon.
Australian Associated Press
