Calvary Mater Newcastle

They are very Good & explaining what's going on. Other's where more than happy to help.

As a patient, I was very disappointed with the level of unprofessional behaviour displayed by nursing staff. There were instances of bullying, intimidation, belittling, and deliberate cruelty by many of the nursing staff.

Terrible bullying at Calvary Mater. Especially in admin areas & secretarial. The dept with the worst reputation for bullying is medical records dept, has a long history of bullying. Manager is the bully & has her 3 sidekicks to do a lot of bullying on her behalf. Rules for some & the rest (the protected species) can do whatever they want. Some staff treated very badly suffered stress & depression. Manager does not care. Wants the easy life.Tells senior managers what she wants them to believe, they have zero interest in staff either. Good staff always end up leaving. You will go places in this hospital if you are a relative or friends of a manager. I did not want to leave but felt no other option.Very disappointing experience, .

They do good work here, despite the overly Churchy vibe.
Good for Emergency and Cancer. Not good for Mental Health and birth control.

Lack of communication between staff is incredible. Good luck seeing a doctor in emergency within 12hours or even getting any pain medication (apart from panadol) when your whole face is swollen and has doubled in size from an allergy. Nurses do a fantastic job though, picking up the slack for lazy inconsiderate doctors.

It is hard to actually rate something as there were many different platforms to our experience, some were good, but the majority was not. The mis-management and lack of communication would have to stand out. My 85 year mother was admitted on a Thursday and so naturally we drove up from Sydney and waited over 3 hours to have a doctor or registrar or somebody come and chat to us about what the treatment plan would be and in the end we had to ask the nurse to explain what she could from the notes. Mum had a tube inserted via her nose, she was given medication that was 450mg in strength, however there was no single tablet on that day so they gave her 3 x 150mg tablets which where the size of a small animal and of course she had immense trouble swallowing them. We were told that the single tablet would be available the next day. NOT! The single tablet was given only after my dear Mum just could not swallow the three and then suffered a mini heart attack. We were told she would be going home Sunday, but was clearly so unwell and stayed on further. Given I am in Sydney and my brother is in Nelson Bay we could not just pop into the hospital and so was reliant on information via phone. I lost count of how many times I was connected to the nurses station where the phone rang and on a couple of occasions was picked up and then hung up. I get you are busy but it doesn't take long to speak to somebody. Most of the time we can turn a blind eye to certain things as we are all busy and doing the best we can, however a decision was made to transfer my mother to a hospital in Nelson Bay, no problems there BUT they neglected to tell any family member, so when I call the phone to speak to mum there was no answer and normally OK as she may have been resting or something - I will call later - a neighbour called my sister-in-law to let her know that mum had left the hospital! We had no clue, we did not know where she was transferred to and why did we not know this - because as my opening sentenced outlined - lack of communication. Not happy Calvary Mater - there must be some protocol on discharging patients and given she is 85 and very unwell it is kind of important. I am pretty sure you would have called had her top medical cover not paid!

We are family trying to get some paperwork for personal reasons. Was put through to THE rudest woman I have ever spoken to Judy or Julie or something. Very abrupt and snappy. Said I had the wrong hospital, talked over me, tried to fob me off and told me i needed this other place. Then trying to get a word in, she talked over me again, she had no patience whatsoever. She gave me another number to call and tried to put me through but did not connect. The old girl just wanted me off the phone. So I rang them. Complete opposite attitude and spoke to a lovely pleasant lady. Nothing was a bother, but she said it was The Mater I needed. Sadly I had to call the old bag back. Why do these old girls stay in jobs when they are not interested or not the least bit nice to people. Why do hospital managers put up with these nasty employees? Time to retire I'd say.

Its a hospital so it needs to be above good. But like most places people are people some are good and some are not.

My mum has just spent three weeks in the care of the Mater in ward 4B. To each and every member of staff in Ward 4B and to Dr Majid and Dr Sam (Registrar) as well as the theatre staff thank you for the most amazing compassionate, professional support and care. You guys are awesome!