being investigated<\/a> by Health NZ amid concerns about extreme workload and patient safety.<\/p>\nThe primary health authority which the practice falls under, which goes by “thePHO”, told RNZ it understood recruitment was underway for another GP and other clinicians.<\/p>\n
It said the clinic was still open and providing in-person and remote services.<\/p>\n
A healthcare worker with experience at the clinic, who RNZ has agreed not to name, said there was an “intense environment of burnout”.<\/p>\n
The healthcare professional said staff were “constantly in tears” and struggling to cope with a high patient load.<\/p>\n
They described a system of “care-rationing”, where staff could only respond to the most immediate of needs.<\/p>\n
“And it means that the people who may also have serious needs but are not immediately acute – they’re put off and put off and put off and then they eventually become acute.”<\/p>\n
They said the situation distressed the staff who wanted to do more for their patients.<\/p>\n
Director of Taikoto Health, Mark Wills, said recent staff changes had created pressures the clinic was working to address.<\/p>\n
“We are making some progress around ensuring that we’ve got the necessary clinical resources in the practice to serve the patients of the practice, including the in-practice resources and remote resources that we can take on to support that patient load.<\/p>\n
“We have new staff that we’ve actually signed contracts with, providers that is, and we have offers to other providers that are in-train right now.”<\/p>\n
He added that replacements for other roles were also being advertised.<\/p>\n
In terms of staff distress, he said there were “emotions when change happens”.<\/p>\n
“With people leaving that can create a perception of overwhelm, which we’re very concerned about and seeking to address.”<\/p>\n
He said clinicians had raised concerns about patient loads and staffing shortages.<\/p>\n
“We’ve listened to that absolutely and that’s why we’re endeavouring to recruit as many as we possibly can to meet that need.”<\/p>\n
He said clinics across the country were struggling with recruitment.<\/p>\n
Staff turnover at Taikoto Health was a result of recent retirements and people moving away for personal reasons, he said.<\/p>\n
But he said the clinic remained safe, with remote staff and dedicated ground resources to meet patients’ needs.<\/p>\n
He vehemently denied claims staff had been pressured to limit phone calls to patients to five minutes.<\/p>\n
“That would be absolutely against our intention to serve the patient community that we have here as appropriately.”<\/p>\n
He also stressed repeatedly that the only GP was not solely responsible for the 4500 patients – there was a mix of nurse practitioners, prescribing nurses, paramedics and other healthcare professionals.<\/p>\n
“You need to take into account that there are other professionals that have the skills and the qualifications to be able to service those GPs. So we do not expect that one GP is looking after all of the care of 4500 patients.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The last general practitioner of a clinic for 4500 patients in Horowhenua has resigned. The Taitoko Health clinic…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":909556,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[64,63,137,500],"class_list":["post-909555","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-healthcare","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-health","tag-healthcare"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/909555","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=909555"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/909555\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/909556"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=909555"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=909555"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=909555"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}