Okay an up front warning this is a long winded vent. Triphid if it is not allowed I will delete but I am furious.

My father remarried after my mother's death while he was still grieving and at a lost in the world (encouraged by his family) she is now referred to as the slag.
My father developed dementia my brother and I were the only ones listed on his Advance Care Plan, and my brother had power of attorney. The slag was living in the house Mum and Dad had bought and had her name put on the title along with a substantial debt.

Dad ended up in a Nursing Home. It was a great one with great staff we have no complaints about them.

They brought Dad down to the common room for breakfast one morning and he got up and started to walk without his walker. (the staff were bringing another person down) He fell hard and broke some ribs.

The public hospital he was sent to seemed to be doing an okay job of looking after him. He was getting better but had started to develop a bit of a chest infection. They took him off the nerve block he was on (because that is the standard treatment and how it is done regardless of the needs of the patient) and proceeded to give him morphine for the pain. They however managed to give him 5 doses of morphine at 5 times the prescribed dosage rate. He went on to develop double pneumonia, (because he was in bed asleep all of the time) and then was unable to swallow (a deterioration of a condition he developed after a stay in hospital where he got critically ill when moved from bed to bed) and would not tolerate the nasogastric tube.
He was sent back to the nursing home to die.

Because he was married to the slag (she sold the house and threw out anything she did not want we got nothing of our parents belongings and would no longer talk to us) the health department and the independent complaints commission will not allow us to speak on his behalf. The slag does not care that he is dead as she has left the state and bought a house with the money she made by selling my parent's house.

I have tried to follow the lines of complaint but got nowhere. I am now going to be writing to the Health Minister and following the directions of the letter we got from the medical cover my ass director as our local GP was made to write the death certificate, (she actually rang me to find out what to write and at the time I thought it would get her in trouble to write it was the hospital's fault but now if she is game so am I) and is the only one able to change it I am going to talk to her about changing it to read that the hospital caused his death through negligence ie the overdoses of morphine the 10 nursing staff failed to realise in the numerous checks they have to make. Which I assume include
1 logging the medication out of the locked cupboard. Read and confirmed by two nursing staff
2 Bedside check before administering read and confirmed by two nursing staff

We assume she can ask for his medical notes. Anyone know of a good but not over the top expensive medical malpractise lawyer. Maybe if we sue them they will allow us to speak for him.

I know it will cost but I do not want to see another person die because this hospital will not take seriously the treatment of senior citizens.

Rant over I am heart sick at his loss he was still a funny and happy man despite the dementia and I loved going to visit him singing songs and taking him for drives. (the slag rarely visited the last time she did she complained that he did not know who she was)