A dying elderly Canberran received such poor treatment at the Canberra Hospital during his last week of life, he begged his daughter to come and take him away.
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Kambah resident Moira Smith said her father wasn't "treated like a person" during his five-day stay at the hospital and, by the end, she was determined he would leave.
She has registered a complaint with the Human Rights Commission over her father's treatment and sent a letter to Health Minister Katy Gallagher.
Ms Smith said she had been looking after her father, who suffered from chronic arthritis, for eight years before he was placed in the Goodwin retirement community in Farrer.
He was referred to Canberra Hospital in August after being diagnosed with flu and pneumonia which was present in the Goodwin community.
Yet after just a few days in Canberra Hospital, the once-enthusiastic man told his daughter, "It's all meaningless. I just want to die."
"I just cannot get it out of my head. The misery of those last few days and my helplessness to do anything about it," she said.
Ms Smith said when she arrived to check on her father he was sitting in a bare room with a improperly tied gown, without slippers, a toothbrush, a comb, soap, pyjamas or glasses.
She said his clothes had also vanished and his teeth had not been cleaned. "When I went in, he said 'Oh thank God you're here. It's awful.'" she said.
Ms Smith said her father's food arrived in tightly-sealed plastic containers he was unable to open with his arthritic hands and staff were often uninterested or unhelpful.
She said she was devastated those would be some of her last memories of her father.
"Nobody deserves to have to go through that. He lived a long life, he worked all the time, he'd been a good father to me and nobody deserved that," she said.
"Nobody saw him as a person."
Three days after her father left the hospital, he died at home.
She said her father's treatment at the Canberra Hospital had shattered her confidence in the ACT's health system, leaving her wondering what will happen when she gets old.
Health Minister Katy Gallagher said she was aware of the complaint and ACT Health was investigating it. She said in the past year, Canberra Hospital had received 4722 pieces of feedback, 70 per cent of which were positive.
Ms Gallagher said the government used feedback to promote positive system changes.
"The ACT government has been working since the start of 2014 on a detailed range of changes to the way that care is provided to patients which have been developed in line with our objectives to continually improve the quality of services we provide," she said.
