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\nPhoto: 123RF\n<\/p>\n
Eating disorder patients put in medical wards due to lack of specialist services
\nPoor access to vital mental health services in medical wards
\nMedical patients – often elderly and extremely unwell – stranded in emergency departments because of lack of beds
\nStaff feel at risk, due to lack of training and resources to deal with complex psychiatric patients<\/p>\n
People with eating disorders who are stuck in medical wards for weeks are not getting the treatment they need – and are taking up beds desperately needed by other patients.<\/p>\n
That’s according to a paper published in The New Zealand Medical Journal on Friday, exposing the lack of specialist eating disorder units<\/a>, which means medical wards are being “pressured” to take on these complex psychiatric patients without training or resources.<\/p>\n Lead author Dr Cindy Towns, a general physician and geriatrician at Wellington Hospital, said current practice not only violated the rights of eating disorder patients to appropriate care, it was causing delays for medical patients – and putting staff at risk for working outside their scope of practice.<\/p>\n “These are complex psychiatric conditions. We can medically stabilise them, but in a medical ward they have no access to psychologists – a cornerstone of treatment.<\/p>\n “Our nurses aren’t trained [to deal with eating disorders], doctors aren’t trained, and there’s very little access to psychiatric services.”<\/p>\n The shortage of specialist eating disorder units meant patients were “defaulting to hospital” for long periods, with untrained healthcare assistants tasked with the job of monitoring their food intake.<\/p>\n “They’re medically stable, it’s just seen as a safe place to put them for prolonged re-feeding. But it’s a very expensive wasteful use of medical resources.”<\/p>\n \nDr Cindy Towns. In Wellington Regional Hospital, the mean length of stay was 19.11 days, while at Hutt Hospital it was just under 30 days – more than double that of a specialist unit in Australia.<\/p>\n Neither hospital employed an eating disorder specialist.<\/p>\n Eating disorder patients were instead supposed to be under the care of consult liaison psychiatry teams.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
\nPhoto: Supplied\n<\/p>\n