Inquiry told of 'unbelievable' doctor bias
A young NSW doctor asked a mother "How hard are you going to try?" when she explored post-stroke rehabilitation options for her daughter with Down syndrome, a disability royal commission has heard.
Christine Regan on Friday told the commission her daughter, Erin Sheehy, was deemed ready for discharge three days after a 2002 stroke which wiped her memory and left her paralysed down her right side.
Ms Regan, who was joined by Ms Sheehy at the commission on Friday, said she knew there would be a long post-stroke recovery and rehabilitation process.
When she asked about that, the young doctor said there was a nine-month stroke protocol.
Ms Regan pressed him on providing that program to her then 25-year-old daughter.
"He said: 'Oh look, she has Down syndrome, how hard are you going to try?'," the mother told a commission hearing in Sydney on Friday.
"I felt like I had been punched in the gut. It was just unbelievable ... there was no medical reason for her not to do rehabilitation and this man was just going to send her home to a life of paralysis and no control and possibly an early departure from this world."
Ms Regan told the doctor she wanted her daughter to get the same treatment anyone else would and Ms Sheehy was moved to a rehabilitation ward where she spent the bulk of her six-week hospital stay.
"We had some nurses who decided Erin needed some extra care and went out of their way, had some doctors who treated Erin's medical conditions with care and with inclusion, but we also had some spectacular failures," Ms Regan said.
She understood her daughter would receive physiotherapy at least once or twice a day in the rehabilitation ward but there was just one session during her entire stay, the commission was told.
Speaking later to reporters, Ms Regan said the rehabilitation was "uninspired and unequal for a person like Erin than it would have been had I had the same stroke at the same age".
She said she wanted doctors to "use their expertise to make medical decisions and not to make decisions about Erin's life or the value of her life relative to anyone else".
The commission also heard from Queensland woman Kim Creevey who described seeing "unconscious bias in action" when her son Harrison stayed in hospital.
Ms Creevey said that on one occasion when her son ended up in hospital with a breathing issue, a pediatrician assumed the problem was caused by his underlying disability.
"While he was standing over Harry's bed - who can understand and hear everything that's going on - he said 'How much more money are we going to spend on him, keeping him alive?'."
"Do you have an end-of-life plan for him?"
It turned out Mr Creevey's symptoms were related to acid reflux which could be readily managed.
Mr Creevey wasn't born with disability but an illness when he was three years old left him with spastic quadriplegia.
He died aged 18 years after being admitted to hospital after experiencing shortness of breath and distress.
