It was hard seeing people crammed into corridors, and brightly lit public spaces with no privacy.<\/p>\n
Sometimes incontinent people were waiting in wet beds until nurses could find a space to change them, she said<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s an absolute nightmare. It feels like we\u2019re at war,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
Classey, like all the nurses in this story, is a NZ Nurses Organisation delegate, which gives them some protection for speaking out.<\/p>\n
The vast majority of nurses in the department signed the letter to Bramley.<\/p>\n
Health NZ said it had a winter plan in place that was helping, but the emergency departments at North Shore and Waitakere Hospitals were having their busiest ever winter.<\/p>\n
Between them, there had been nearly 14,000 patients through the doors in July, it said.<\/p>\n
But the nurses\u2019 letter said the crisis was \u201centirely predictable.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cHealth New Zealand failed to adequately plan for winter demand, placing patients and staff at unnecessary risk,\u201d it said.<\/p>\n
Some of the problems outlined included:<\/p>\n
patients waiting 90 minutes to be triagedheart scans that should be done immediately, taking hourspatients waiting more than 50 hours in the ED for a bed in the hospitalpatients missing essential medicationspatients left in soiled beds in overcrowded corridorsthe department at 300% capacity at times.<\/p>\n
Health NZ had agreed to hire 25 nurses for the department but only nine had come, the nurses said.<\/p>\n
Line of grey heads<\/p>\n
Nurses spoken to by RNZ said it was often impossible for people to get privacy in the ED when they were feeling at their worst.<\/p>\n
Sharon Franklin-Smith said she sometimes looked down to see a line of grey heads \u2013 people in their 80s or 90s \u2013 being cared for in the corridor.<\/p>\n
That meant a lack of dignity and respect.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s someone\u2019s mother, grandmother and it breaks my heart, it absolutely breaks my heart,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
Jean Moor has been a nurse for 35 years and said it was the worst she had seen it.<\/p>\n
Nurses were juggling caring for their own patients, keeping an eye on those waiting, and trying to organise assessments and treatments.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou\u2019re running, you\u2019re constantly working really hard, your brain is in overdrive,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
Like many of the nurses, she often got home hoping no one had died because they had not got the care they needed.<\/p>\n
Health NZ starts some hiring<\/p>\n
The day after it received the letter, Health NZ announced Friday it had started recruitment for 50 new nurses for North Shore and Waitakere Hospitals \u2013 both are operated by Health NZ\u2019s Waitemat\u0101 district.<\/p>\n
Nine would be for the North Shore emergency department.<\/p>\n
Health NZ group director of operations Brad Healey said in a statement that Health NZ would also hire 10 nurses and 14 health care assistants who would be in a central team to be dispatched where needed in the hospitals.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe additional staff in the centralised nursing team gives us greater flexibility to respond to surges in demand and also cover unplanned leave.\u201d<\/p>\n
The organisation\u2019s winter plan had helped care for more patients in the community and moved people quickly through the hospitals to free up space \u2013 but the demand this season had been much higher than previous years, he said.<\/p>\n
Healey said the hospitals have \u201camazing staff\u201d and he hoped the recruitment would ease the load.<\/p>\n
Chief executive Dale Bramley said last week that seriously ill people should always still go to an emergency department where they will get priority care.<\/p>\n
But the North Shore ED nurses said nine new nurses announced on Friday was not enough.<\/p>\n
Health NZ had earlier agreed to 25 but had so far only hired nine, as part of a recruitment go-slow, they said.<\/p>\n
The department now needed even more to cope with the numbers through the doors, the nurses said.<\/p>\n
Health NZ did not respond to RNZ\u2019s request about the letters detailing claims about care in the department.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It was hard seeing people crammed into corridors, and brightly lit public spaces with no privacy. Sometimes incontinent…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":578148,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[1975,69003,26034,15974,134,527,2241,78,101,111,139,529,69,6293,42543,42542,18484,284757,10510],"class_list":["post-578147","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-healthcare","tag-at","tag-beds","tag-department","tag-emergency","tag-health","tag-healthcare","tag-hospital","tag-in","tag-left","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-north","tag-nz","tag-patients","tag-quinn","tag-rowan","tag-shore","tag-soiled","tag-waiting"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/578147","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=578147"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/578147\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/578148"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=578147"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=578147"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=578147"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}