\u201cThen on Saturday morning, she texts, we\u2019ve been told there are no showers till Monday because there are no towels.\u201d<\/p>\n
Cruickshank said she phoned the clinical co-ordinator to check.<\/p>\n
\u201c[The clinical coordinator] said, \u2018Yeah, we are currently out of towels, but we\u2019re trying to source some.\u2019\u201d <\/p>\n
Cruickshank said she was then given the go-ahead to bring her own towels for staff to use to shower her mother.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo it just seems like a really bizarre thing.\u201d <\/p>\n
Cruickshank said she had no trouble taking in some fresh towels, but her concern was for those who couldn\u2019t access personal help.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s a whole lot of other people in there that don\u2019t have family. [And] You may not know that, apparently, you need to provide towels when you\u2019re in a hospital nowadays.\u201d<\/p>\n
Towels were in short supply at Waikato Hospital. Photo \/ 123rf<\/p>\n
In a statement, Health New Zealand and Te Whatu Ora acting group director of operations for Waikato, Rachel Swain, confirmed there was a \u201ctemporary towel shortage\u201d in the Older Persons Rehabilitation (OPR) ward, but said it was an isolated incident on December 27 and resolved within 24 hours.<\/p>\n
\u201c[The towel shortage] occurred due to an unforeseen operational issue that resulted in available emergency linen being depleted,\u201d Swain said.<\/p>\n
Swain said the duty nurse manager sourced towels from other hospital areas and the issue was escalated to the hospital\u2019s linen provider, with the shortage \u201cresolved within 24 hours\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe shortage was isolated to OPR and did not impact other wards,\u201d Swain said. <\/p>\n
\u201cPatient care, hygiene, and access to showers were maintained during this time. There are no current linen supply issues at Waikato Hospital.\u201d<\/p>\n
Tom Eley is a multimedia journalist at the Waikato Herald. He previously worked for the Weekend Sun and Sunlive.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cThen on Saturday morning, she texts, we\u2019ve been told there are no showers till Monday because there are…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":221424,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[17517,2516,4731,15453,2109,2082,2241,3274,111,43,139,69,24808,1597,6293,53318,17718,3048,14182,115894,8207,1886,1529,133077,133078,24927,1524,19791,1339],"class_list":["post-221423","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-zealand","tag-because","tag-concern","tag-days","tag-elderly","tag-family","tag-for","tag-hospital","tag-hospitals","tag-new-zealand","tag-news","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-older","tag-patient","tag-patients","tag-persons","tag-rehabilitation","tag-said","tag-shortage","tag-shower","tag-sparks","tag-support","tag-three","tag-towel","tag-towels","tag-unable","tag-waikato","tag-ward","tag-without"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/221423","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=221423"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/221423\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/221424"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=221423"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=221423"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=221423"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}