"She has been going through hell," Mr Samuels said. Doris Samuels awaiting chemo treatment. On this occasion she waited one hour and 45 minutes Mr Samuels said the experience had been worsened by long delays and mistakes from stressed nurses. "[The centre] is a brand-new building with brand-new facilities for treatment but they are so short-staffed," he said. "This is no reflection on the nurses, the staff, the consultants ... it is just under-resourced."

He said once in June, staff could not take the routine pre-chemotherapy blood tests from Mrs Samuels' chest port, as her consultant had ordered, because no one qualified was available, meaning she did not get her treatment that day. "What a drama I had with that ... they were saying 'sorry, I don't have the staff to do it'," he said. He asked his local MP for help and she wrote a letter to Health Minister Kim Hames, after which he received an immediate reply and reschedule. "But only because I took it where I took it. What about the people without that opportunity?" he said. He said nurses were making mistakes and one day the mistake was a big one.

"They were flat out. We could see it. The nurses were rushing around, the patients were all on the seats ... they are so stressed out and under the pump. The nurse just forgot," he said. What the nurse forgot was to give Mrs Samuels a medication usually infused with her chemotherapy drugs to dampen the internal spasms the chemotherapy caused. "Excruciating" pain followed, with Mrs Samuels doubled over and weeping, taken to the Emergency Department and ultimately hospitalised for three days. Mr Samuels said his wife had, several times, had to wait hours for chemotherapy, once for two and a half hours. "It was tedious, it was very draining, and with Doris still sustaining the side effects – she was absolutely knocked out – it was horrendous," he said.

He said the "packed" chemotherapy waiting area was unsuitable for such waiting periods. Sick people tried to curl up in armchairs, lie down on tiny couches or sit on hard plastic and wooden chairs better suited to a beachside cafe. "I don't call that a waiting room, I call that a corridor," he said. "It is painful." He had written a letter to the hospital asking for a handful of reclining armchairs to allow the sicker patients to lie down while they waited for treatment and had been advised it was going to the "ergonomic committee".

Later the hospital advised him reclining lounges could be unhygienic and so could not be provided. After he complained it did replace some of the chairs with hard wooden cafe-style chairs that he said looked even less comfortable than the old ones. Meanwhile, patients were fashioning reclining chairs for themselves and for each other by pushing together bits of furniture. He had seen one such recliner in the discharge ward covered in what looked like medical waste. "You tell me whether the hygiene level is bloody good there or not," he said.

"If you've got a heart and you're compassionate you are going to say this is total disregard for what is going on. "They are understaffed, under-resourced and stuffing up. "It's gone beyond just my wife now, honestly, because I know where she is going to be at some stage in the future. "But other people don't have a voice. They don't know their way around and they just cop it." Mr Samuels began a petition on website change.org and also a physical one asking for better services and staffing at SCGH, which he delivered to Mirrabooka MLA Janine Freeman with more than 1200 signatures.

Ms Freeman toured the facility recently with opposition health spokesman Roger Cook. "They assured us they had staff. It's really quite apparent that's not actually the case," she said. "One of the things Roger and I both noticed was that in terms of built infrastructure it's great. But what it's lacking is a patient focus and you can't have a patient focus if staff are stressed. "A building doesn't make a service." She said she had tabled Mr Samuels' petition in Parliament, bringing it to the attention of Health Minister Kim Hames four times since April, but he had failed to take any significant action.

She said she had stopped Premier Colin Barnett in person and asked him to take notice of the petition. Although he could not discuss the history or treatment of individual patients, a spokesman for the North Metropolitan Health Service said the Cancer Centre provided up to 1000 chemotherapy treatments per month. "Staff strive to deliver the highest quality care to all patients who attend the facility," he said. He said the hospital was addressing wait-times in the centre by "re-scheduling activities and resources", but also said it had sufficient staff. He said wait times, kept to less than 30 minutes for 85 per cent of patients, were not compromising patient care or clinical outcomes.

He also said that while 550 people used the Cancer Centre each day, only one formal complaint about the waiting furniture was made in the past 12 months. "Two new reclining chairs have been purchased and further alternative seating options will be provided following an ergonomic review," he said. A number of other patients or those with experience of the Cancer Centre have commented on Mr Samuels' petition on the Change.org web page. One read: "My husband passed away with cancer..the centre may look state of the art but it is grossly understaffed. There is no case management model, poor education and a general lack of support." Whilst another post said; "Everyone has the right to feel they are being looked after. Australia has the funds and resources to provide better equipment to those doing it tough and it is imperative that these change are made to ensure continuity of care. Oh and as a side note, as a cancer survivor I know full well the importance of this petition and the need for everyone to understand the importance as well."