industry & reform
Merle Mitchell
gives evidence via
video. Photo: AAP/
Royal Commission
No voice, no choice
A summary of the third
round of the aged care royal
commission’s hearings in Sydney,
which focused on dementia.
By Conor Burke
D
arryl Hilda Melchhart, a sharp-
minded 90-year-old who has lived
in residential aged care since 2014,
was the first to take the stand in Sydney
at the hearings of the Royal Commission
into Aged Care Quality and Safety. Inside
a small courtroom, she spoke to the many
problems within residential care as she
sees it, from rationed incontinence pads, to
bland food, to loneliness.
Melchhart groaned when prompted to
talk about the problems she faces when
asking nurses for simple things such as
getting her medical paperwork ready for
the cardiologist.
More shocking were her recollections
of the violence she faced at the hands
of other residents on the ward, where, in
her estimate, only 10 of the 90 residents
have their full faculties.
One incident saw a resident come into
Melchhart’s room to steal her jewellery
box. When confronted, the resident
attacked her with a mug.
Melchhart has spoken to staff about all
of these issues, she said, but she feels as
if she has “no voice”.
When she alerted a nurse to her
expiring GTN spray, which she needs
for a heart condition, she said the nurse
refused to grant her a new one and took
the depleted spray away. This left her
without this potential life-saver for nearly
four days, until her doctor intervened.
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Another aged care resident, Merle
Mitchell, AM, gave evidence via a pre-
recorded video. She told the court of the
“terrible” time she had transitioning from
an independent life to an “institution”.
She felt she had “no choice” but to
conform to the strict schedules imposed
upon her.
Like Melchhart, Mitchell recounted
her own near-death experience. “Three
senior people” ignored Mitchell’s
complaints of pain, telling her “it is all in
your head”.
Only when a fellow resident warned
nurses that they were at risk of
committing elder abuse was Mitchell
taken to hospital, she said.
She was found to have a crushed disc
and broken back.
When asked whether she felt that staff
are adequately trained to provide care,
Mitchell gave a blunt “no”.
And if she could nominate one thing to
change in the sector?
“Ratios, ratios, ratios. Everybody will tell
you that.”
‘NO LONGER THE MAN HE WAS’
Drugged without family consent and
strapped to a chair for hours on end,
Terrence Reeves spent a hellish 60 days
in Garden View aged care facility, the
royal commission was told.
Wife Lillian and daughters Michelle
McCulla and Natalie Smith recounted
how an otherwise fit Reeves entered the
Garden View facility on a short respite
with dementia, and at that point was still
able to shower himself and get around
with Lillian’s help.
Lillian and her daughters were
approached by staff about signing a
restraint form for Reeves for short periods,
as they “felt that during changeover shift
there weren’t a lot of people that would be
watching him, and that it would be for his
own safety”.
However, in McCulla’s testimony, the
court heard that on nearly 30 occasions
family members turned up to find Reeves
restrained, sometimes in a secure dementia
wing with many other patients strapped to
chairs in a small room.
On nearly every other visit to the
facility, McCulla or other family members
found Reeves tied down, she said, and in
one instance found him “drooling” and
“shivering”, barefoot and wearing only a
singlet wet with saliva.
Reeves was also wet from incontinence
that day, and McCulla recounts hearing
his screams as he was changed by six
nurses all pulling at separate limbs trying to
undress him.
“Dad grabbed my arm and said, ‘How
would you like it?’” McCulla said.
Lillian told the commission that at no
point did she mention to Garden View
staff that she ever gave her husband
risperidone, nor did she ever consent
to him being administered the drug by
Garden View staff.
However, the women were convinced
that their father was being medicated.
McCulla remembered an occasion
when the whole family brought a home-
cooked lunch to Reeves. They found him
unconscious, she said, but were told he
was asleep.
As they tried to rouse him, he started to
gag. McCulla found a piece of meat lodged
in his throat.
She cleared the obstruction and lifted
him up to continue rousing him, only
to find he had faeces smeared all along
his back.
There was then a disagreement between
the family and Garden View as to whether
Reeves had been medicated.
According to notes presented to the
commission, Reeves was regularly given
a dose of risperidone, which staff say had
been approved by Lilian.
However, the family say this is not
the case, and when they confronted
staff that day, they were told Reeves
had not been given the drug in about
a month.
“They said, ‘No, no, look at his charts.’
I was convinced that it was risperidone,”
McCulla said.
An RN from Garden View gave evidence
that she was told by Lillian Reeves that it