‘I was scared’: Dr Dinesh Palipana about turning whistleblower over spinal unit
The emergency doctor who has quadriplegia has used his darkest hours to shine a light on the 'depressing' state of Queensland’s only spinal unit.
The place Dr Dinesh Palipana was taken to rebuild his life after a catastrophic car accident paralysed him from the chest down was a place where patients were sometimes left to lie in their own faeces.
He was, as you expect, already struggling to come to terms with what was happening to him.
But for seven months he lived in the dingy, cramped and depressing confines of Princess Alexandra Hospital’s spinal unit in Brisbane, sharing a room with three other patients who were also going through the worst life can offer.
“It was so hard,” he tells 6minutes. “My mum came every day but just that environment — it was dark and it was awful.
