{"id":608749,"date":"2026-09-23T02:16:09","date_gmt":"2026-09-23T02:16:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/608749\/"},"modified":"2026-09-23T02:16:09","modified_gmt":"2026-09-23T02:16:09","slug":"christchurch-hospital-ed-treats-14582-patients-in-corridors-in-one-year","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/608749\/","title":{"rendered":"Christchurch Hospital ED treats 14,582 patients in corridors in one year"},"content":{"rendered":"

Health NZ says Christchurch<\/a> is experiencing some of the highest levels of demand seen in recent years, as are hospitals around the country.<\/p>\n

It said additional spaces may be used, like corridors<\/a>, to care for patients but corridors aren\u2019t always used this way.<\/p>\n

However, senior ED doctor Dominic Fleischer said having patients in corridors was now routine.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt is absolutely the norm to have patients in corridors and patients in corridors for hours overnight. [On] Tuesday, I had patients who\u2019d been in the corridors for verging on 24 hours<\/a>, and not one, not two, but several.\u201d<\/p>\n

Fleischer said these were often people who needed to be admitted to hospital, but there were simply no beds in the wards.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd so they stay in the corridors where they get absolutely substandard care. <\/p>\n

\u201cYou can\u2019t talk to a patient in the corridor because it\u2019s noisy, it\u2019s not private. So you can\u2019t get a good history from a patient. You can\u2019t examine them like you could in a private cubicle. You can\u2019t do basic tests. You can\u2019t monitor them,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n

NZ Nurses Organisation delegate Al Dietschin echoed this, saying patients could not be cared for with dignity in corridors.<\/p>\n

He added it was clear that people were self-discharging more, after having to wait 12 or more hours in the ED.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut it\u2019s also happening throughout the hospital, especially in surgical wards from time to time, people get bumped off waiting lists for surgery.\u201d<\/p>\n

Dietschin said employing more staff would no doubt help the problem, but substantial workforce or infrastructure planning was also required.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe see an ageing population that\u2019s becoming more acutely unwell, but we haven\u2019t looked 20 years, 50 years ahead and sort of gone, \u2018Well, this is where we\u2019re going to be.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Health NZ\u2019s Canterbury<\/a> operations director, Hamish Brown, said it recognised that receiving care in the corridor was not an experience wanted for patients, and wasn\u2019t an environment staff wanted to be providing care in.<\/p>\n

He added that preparations had been underway since March to improve hospital flow, and enable patients to return home sooner.<\/p>\n

\u201cSpecifically in Christchurch we have funded three general practices … to provide additional evening and weekend urgent care clinics, provided an additional 750 urgent care telehealth vouchers for people presenting to Christchurch ED during the winter months, [and] employed additional clinical staff across key areas.\u201d<\/p>\n

Fleischer said a new after-hours clinic in Rolleston had been a \u201chuge help\u201d but the rest were small changes.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe know this time next year we\u2019ll be in an even worse position than we are this time. And so it\u2019d be nice to have some co-ordinated planning to try and make that not happen,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe changes have to be monumental<\/a>. We can\u2019t be talking about small tinkering around the edges. The department needs more doctors, more nurses, more beds.\u201d<\/p>\n

Jaime Cunningham is a Christchurch-based reporter with a focus on education and general news. She joined Newstalk ZB in 2023 after working as a sports reporter at the Christchurch Star.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Health NZ says Christchurch is experiencing some of the highest levels of demand seen in recent years, as…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":608750,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[299940,6726,4487,110415,26034,7061,13973,15974,134,527,2241,3274,78,302,5829,130,111,139,68446,69,5270,6293,2687,5843,131,223,1529,14005,29863,31090,102,379,1530],"class_list":["post-608749","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-healthcare","tag-299940","tag-become","tag-christchurch","tag-corridors","tag-department","tag-doctor","tag-ed","tag-emergency","tag-health","tag-healthcare","tag-hospital","tag-hospitals","tag-in","tag-its","tag-many","tag-more","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-norm","tag-nz","tag-one","tag-patients","tag-saying","tag-senior","tag-than","tag-the","tag-three","tag-times","tag-treating","tag-treats","tag-with","tag-year","tag-years"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/608749","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=608749"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/608749\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/608750"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=608749"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=608749"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=608749"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}