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SYDNEY - The husband of a woman who miscarried in a Sydney hospital toilet after waiting two hours in the emergency department broke down while detailing the ordeal.
The New South Wales Government has announced an external inquiry will be held into the treatment of Jana Horska, who was left waiting in acute pain at Royal North Shore Hospital.
Her husband, Mark Dreyer, fronted the media yesterday to tell of his 32-year-old wife's ordeal in the hope it would not happen to anyone else.
"We are realists, we know you can't stop a miscarriage if there's going to be a miscarriage, but at least we should have been taken in [to a ward of the hospital]," Dreyer said.
"I reckon we would have got better care in a Third World country."
When she arrived at the hospital, Horska was 14 weeks pregnant and experiencing symptoms similar to those she had when she miscarried in March.
Dreyer repeatedly asked staff for someone to see his wife, who at one stage was squatting on the floor with her hands wrapped around her legs. Dreyer said his wife then went to the toilet. After she'd been gone a while, he went to check on her.
"Here's my wife sitting on a toilet, screaming with a look on her face I'll never get out of my mind, holding a live fetus between her legs with blood everywhere."
He said he blamed both staff and the health service for providing no "care and comfort".
NSW Health Minister Reba Meagher said she had issued an apology to Dreyer.
-AAP
