This week, I received a comment from one of my subscribers, whom I will refer to as KC. She wanted to share what happened to her on Tuesday when she tried to access urgent medical care through our public health system. Her story deserves to be told because it paints a grim picture of what New Zealanders now face when they fall seriously ill.
KC’s story
On Tuesday afternoon, she phoned her GP because she couldn’t physically make it to the clinic. She suffers from severe dizziness, heart fluttering, chest pain, shortness of breath, and COPD. After describing her symptoms, her doctor told her to go straight to the hospital. He suspected a serious issue with her heart or lungs and sent a referral to Waikato Hospital. Her husband called an ambulance, and St John staff did two ECGs - one at home and one on the way, both showing irregular heart activity.
Before they even reached the hospital, her husband received a call from the medical centre saying the hospital’s cardiology department was “too busy.” She would instead be sent through A&E. What he wasn’t told was that the GP’s referral letter stated she had “Atrial Fibrillation.”
The long wait begins
When she arrived at Waikato Hospital, she waited 35 minutes in the ambulance before being moved into triage. The ambulance bays were full. Once inside, she waited again while the “handover” happened. Two Māori men nearby were laughing and joking loudly. They even directed their remarks toward her. She ignored them, but the lack of privacy and dignity was clear from the start.
Eventually she was placed in the waiting area, which was packed. Most people weren’t alone. They were chatting, eating from vending machines, and laughing, seemingly there for anything but emergencies. “Why are they here at A&E meant for sick people?” she wondered. She sat in that chair for three hours, never once seen by a doctor.
Three nurses, no doctors
Over those three hours she was approached by three different nurses, each taking her into a private room for tests, an ECG, a blood test, then another ECG. All were foreign nurses. One, with broken English, asked if the fading insect bites on her ankle were why she had come to A&E. That question alone made her question how such people were being registered to work in New Zealand hospitals.
By the time her husband arrived, she’d already decided to give it another 45 minutes. When no doctor appeared, she told staff she would leave. She was offered her blood test results. One hormone was low, calcium normal, but still no medical assessment. Dinner had been a dry sandwich, inedible for a diabetic who needed real food to take insulin. She left at 8:12 p.m. exhausted, hungry, and without answers.
She left a comment early Thursday morning, still wheezing, dizzy, and struggling to breathe. Her message ended with a chilling line: “I’ve told hubby to refer to this message should I suffer a stroke or heart attack.”
Our health system is stretched to breaking point, where seriously ill people are triaged behind those who shouldn’t even be in emergency departments, and where foreign staff with questionable communication skills are filling the roles Kiwis once proudly held.
When people start writing messages like this, just in case they don’t make it, you know something is deeply wrong with our country’s priorities.
Labour can promise all the free doctor visits it wants, but when even urgent cases cannot get seen by a doctor, “free” means nothing.
Matua Kahurangi is just a bloke sharing thoughts on New Zealand and the world beyond. No fluff, just honest takes. He blogs on https://matuakahurangi.com/ where this article was sourced
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