Hospital apologises to patient

Michelle Lowe couldn't believe her treatment by hospital staff. Photo / Chris Skelton

Medical authorities have been forced to make an embarrassing apology to an Auckland woman who was asked irrelevant questions about her sexual history when she sought medication to ease her chronic abdominal pain.

West Auckland mother Michelle Lowe also claims she was made to feel like some "mad drug seeker" by staff at North Shore Hospital. Since last February, Lowe has been in and out of hospital with numerous gastric problems, which have left her virtually bedridden in constant pain. But it's her dealings with medical staff that have given her the most misery.

Those dealings culminated in an "excruciating" overnight stay at North Shore Hospital on December 1 where Lowe was first refused pain relief for pelvic pain and then asked by a doctor about the number of sexual partners she had had.

Lowe, who is married with one child, had initially been transferred to North Shore from Waitakere Hospital after an altercation with a staff nurse who she claims told her to stop "wasting our bloody time".

At North Shore Hospital she claims the doctor failed to read her patient notes which referred to the fact she recently had an IUD removed - something which she believes could have been part of why she was suffering persistent abdominal pain.

After the doctor left, Lowe was refused morphine, despite being doubled over in pain.

"I was told I should see how I cope without it. I was in real pain and this just wasn't on, especially as the doctor had already charted a course of morphine," Lowe said.

In a letter to Lowe, Waitemata District Health Board hospital operations service manager Sheila Davidson apologised for her treatment.

Davidson promised Lowe that lessons had been learned from her case.