Emergency Department staff at Tauranga Hospital have declared “a state of emergency”, warning of the risks of an ED which they say is often running at 150-200 percent of its capacity, without the staffing needed.<\/p>\n
More than 100 Nurses Organisation (NZNO) members and ED staff at the hospital have written a letter to Health New Zealand’s (HNZ) CEO Dale Bramley last Tuesday about their concerns.<\/p>\n
The letter said the ED hasn’t received the extra nursing staff required, as identified in “Care Capacity Demand Management” (CCDM) assessments over the past two years.<\/p>\n
It said a patient collapsing in the ED wait room toilet was a stark reminder of the risks when overcrowding becomes normalised, and the ED is required to operate beyond their capacity everyday.<\/p>\n
NZNO delegate John Wylie said staff being asked to assess and treat some patients in corridors had become routine practice due to the ongoing patient flow pressures.<\/p>\n
“We are often working at more than 150-200% capacity, and I cannot recall any recent day when the ED was not running at over 100% capacity,” he said.<\/p>\n
The letter urged HNZ to approve the hiring of more nurses, based on calculations from the previous CCDMs.<\/p>\n
Modelling for 2025\/2026 found that 13.66 more roles were needed for Tauranga’s ED, across nurses and health care assistants, and 16.78 more roles were needed for 2026\/2027, in order to meet safe staffing.”<\/p>\n
NZNO president Anne Daniels said the need for extra staffing was likely to be even more, because of the big increase in presentations to ED this winter.<\/p>\n
The NZNO is advocating for a change in government.<\/p>\n
A response from Dale Bramley, dated a day after he received the letter from the workers, said he’d recently visited the Tauranga Hospital ED.<\/p>\n
He said he’d had conversations with staff about the challenges on the frontline.<\/p>\n
“I acknowledge the sustained pressures experienced by the department and the impact these can have on both staff wellbeing and the delivery of patient care,<\/p>\n
“Ensuring Tauranga ED has the workforce and resources it needs to provide safe, high-quality care is a priority,” he said in the letter.<\/p>\n
Bramley said decisions on staffing sit with the regional director for Midland – Cath Cronin – and the interim group director of operations for Bay of Plenty, Jo Gibbs.<\/p>\n
He said he’d asked Cronin and Gibbs to meet with staff, and agree on the way forward on uplifting staff numbers.<\/p>\n
“I have asked that this meeting occurs within a fortnight,” said Bramley in the letter.<\/p>\n
RNZ has approached HNZ for comment on the ED and staffing situation at Tauranga Hospital’s ED.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Emergency Department staff at Tauranga Hospital have declared “a state of emergency”, warning of the risks of an…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":600590,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[134,527,111,139,69],"class_list":["post-600589","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-healthcare","tag-health","tag-healthcare","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/600589","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=600589"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/600589\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/600590"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=600589"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=600589"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=600589"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}