Miscarrying mother told 'life's a bitch' by hospital doctor

**Terminator** · 01-16-09, 07:58 PM

A SYDNEY woman was told "life's a bitch" by a doctor as she was miscarrying her baby in a New South Wales hospital, her husband says.
She is the latest in a string of women to reveal their harrowing stories of poor treatment while miscarrying at NSW public hospitals.
The woman, who does not wish to be named, was 12 weeks pregnant when she went to Prince of Wales Hospital in Sydney's east on December 30 last year after discovering she was bleeding.
Once at the hospital's emergency department she was told to sit down and wait, said her husband Garry.
After around half an hour, she was seen briefly by a junior doctor who asked if she was pregnant.
After conducting some blood tests, the doctor advised the woman to come back the next day and see the early pregnancy clinic, in line with the hospital's policy.
"Then she said that's all they could do for us," Garry said.

"We then proceeded to get up out of the waiting room that she had us in and she tapped my wife on the shoulder and said, 'Life's a bitch'.
"She said, 'I suggest you could have a glass of wine but I know you can't. That's all we can do'."
Garry said he and his wife had both worked as nurses and received excellent care for both a previous miscarriage and an ectopic pregnancy.
Nothing had prepared them for the treatment they received that day, he said.
"As nurses, we know how the ER (emergency room) works and we know they're busy," he said.
"But the fact that we were patronised to a degree, the fact they asked my wife if she was pregnant was really downgrading."
News of their ordeal comes just hours after a Broken Hill woman revealed she miscarried in a NSW hospital toilet when she was 23 weeks pregnant with twins on December 17.
At least another three women have complained about the care they received while miscarrying at Maitland Hospital in the Hunter Valley.
Lisa Watt, 39, said she was haunted "every day" after having to flush her baby down the emergency department toilet at Maitland on May 19 last year, because there was no bed available.
New protocols say women suspected of miscarrying should be transferred immediately to a maternity ward.
They were developed after a government inquiry into the case of Jana Horska, who miscarried in a toilet at Sydney's Royal North Shore Hospital in September 2007.