More than one in 10 patients at Wollongong Hospital felt threatened by other staff or visitors, and nearly two thirds were not given any indication of how long they would wait in emergency to be treated.
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According to the results of a new survey, which asked people about their hospital experiences in the 2020-21 financial year, Wollongong Hospital was also rated "significantly lower" than other hospitals in NSW in a question about whether staff checked on them while they waited to be treated.
However, the city's doctors and nurses also received a glowing report from 93 per cent of patients surveyed who said overall they would rate the health professionals who treated them as "very good" or "good" - which was higher than the state average.
Covering the period beginning from when restrictions from the first NSW lockdown were easing in July 2020 and ending just as the Delta outbreak began in June 2021, the Bureau of Health Information (BHI) results catalogue the experiences of about 300 patients who presented to Wollongong emergency department in that time.
Statewide, almost 21,000 patients who were admitted to 77 large emergency departments were surveyed.
BHI Chief Executive Dr Diane Watson said patients who responded gave mostly high ratings of the care they received.
"Patients provided feedback about their visits to the ED during the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020-21, when there were significant changes in how services were delivered," she said.
"Almost nine in 10 patients (89%) said, overall, their care was 'very good' or 'good'."
In recent months, Wollongong emergency department has come under fire from patients and health professionals, who have reported increasing waiting times and chaotic conditions as ongoing staff shortages hit the health system.
Paramedics say this has spilled over into ambulance bays, where patients have been left waiting for eight hours or more on some nights, due to a lack of beds available in emergency.
The results of the 2020-21 patient survey indicate these problems were not as severe during the first part of the pandemic, with the "overall" rating that people gave their ED health professionals at Wollongong going up compared to the previous year.
63 per cent rated their ED health professionals as "very good" and 30 per cent rated them as "good". Less than five respondents (1 per cent) rated their health professionals as "poor".
Similarly, 59 per cent of patients said the care they received was "very good" and 29 per cent said it was "good".
Elsewhere in the Illawarra, three quarters of Shellharbour hospital patients surveyed said they would speak highly of their experience in the ED if asked about it by friends and family, and nine out of ten said they would rate their health professionals as very good or good.
However, like at Wollongong, Shellharbour was rated significantly lower than other hospitals when patients were asked if staff checked on them while they waited to be treated.
Nearly one in five patients at Shellharbour said they did not think they were given enough information about their condition, and one in 10 said they didn't think they were given enough information to manage their care at home.
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Kate McIlwain
For more than a decade, I've helped the Illawarra Mercury set the news agenda across the region. Currently I'm the paper's health reporter - covering the stories of Illawarra workers and residents in the wake of a global pandemic and at a time where our health systems are stretched to the limit.
For more than a decade, I've helped the Illawarra Mercury set the news agenda across the region. Currently I'm the paper's health reporter - covering the stories of Illawarra workers and residents in the wake of a global pandemic and at a time where our health systems are stretched to the limit.
