I don't know if you recall but basically the same thing happened in 2021 at Middlemore Hospital. It was strange to me how little attention it received at the time, especially given everything else that was going wrong. There were people waiting for ambulances and dying in their doorways.
That was happening a lot. There were reports of overcrowded EDs, understaffed hospitals and all sorts of other problems. Yet, for some reason, it barely attracted any attention and I could never really explain why.
Perhaps, in retrospect, it was simply that it didn't fit the narrative. It was a Labour government at the time, Jacinda Ardern was Prime Minister and the government was pouring large amounts of money into a range of areas, including hospitals. So there was no easy explanation for why these things were happening.
Now, of course, it's much easier to explain: National government, austerity, therefore not enough money. There's a logical connection there, whether you agree with it or not.
While I'm horrified that this has happened, at least it is getting the attention it deserves because it was predictable — and it was predicted.
The problem is simple: we do not have enough nurses and doctors in our hospitals. Go into a hospital and tell me that's not true. Don't worry about the numbers that get trotted out every time we talk about this. We hear, "Oh, we've hired heaps of doctors, we've hired heaps of nurses," and so on. Numbers can be misleading.
You can say you've hired two new nurses but are those nurses fulltime or part-time? If they're fulltime, then you've gained two nurses. If they're part-time, you've effectively gained one fulltime equivalent nurse. This is the kind of thing I'm told is happening at the moment.
Ignore the numbers and look at what's actually happening.
Waikato ED wait times are so long that the waiting room is overcrowded and people are queueing out the door.
Does that look like a fully staffed department to you? No, because it isn't.
And the reason I want this to get attention is that an ED is one place none of us can avoid. Rich or poor, we're all likely to end up there at some point if we need emergency medical help. It has to work.
If it doesn't work, then people's lives are at risk. And the more attention that's focused on the fact that it isn't working, the greater the chance that something is actually done to fix it.
Heather du Plessis-Allan is a journalist and radio broadcaster who hosts Newstalk ZB's weekday Drive-Time Show – where this article was sourced.
6 comments:
People also attend ED because a GP appointment might be weeks away. Plus of course ED is free...
People die in a whole lot of places for a whole lot of reasons. The knee-jerk reaction to the death in a hospital bathroom is totallly unwarranted until the cause of death is determined. Perhaps he was going to die anyway. Perhaps he died for reasons totally unrelated to his presence in A&E. But then it's election year isn't it so it's really got nothing to do with the victim. He is a convenient stick for the left to use to hit the Goverment with. The left who can't admit that perhaps the money wasted on the Maori Health Authority would have been better spent in the nation's A&E departments where it would have benefited everyone. Yet unbelievably they say they will do it all over again if re-elected.
What a load of bollocks, Heather. National are pumping more money into Hospitals than ever before, that is excluding Labour's billion dollar folly of creating a separate Maori health service that's now been scrapped. And while Labour were in control, wait times significantly increased. They are now improving again.
But if you really want to lower the wait times, there needs to be a nominal charge introduced. Make it free, and people will always abuse the privilege.
According to AI research NZ has more nurses and doctors per head of population than the UK, the USA, and even the much vaunted European healthcare leader, France. So why are they so inefficiently used? Because the hospitals they work in are old and broken, and that’s the fault of every government NZ has had since the health service was invented.
That people dying in hospital (shock, horror, who could have guessed?) even makes the news tells you everything you need to know about the MSM reporting of this particular sad case.
Anon at 9.35 has a good point. Charge $10 entry fee to ED and see if the numbers drop.
(Just make sure the money goes to pay nursing staff).
The same approach was used with taxpayer-funded legal aid; some offendors never turned up at court. Because the system laid it all on for them they didn't care. The idea was to make them pay $25 towards their defence and give them a stake in the game. I'm not sure if it was a big success but worth trying.
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