Agonising wait for surgery
Hospitals struggling to cope with surge in patient numbers
People with broken bones are facing agonising delays to have surgery because of an unprecedented number of patients, potentially putting some at risk of serious complications.
The number of seriously injured or sick people needing orthopaedic surgery has leaped by 80 per cent in 11 months at Middlemore Hospital, forcing the postponement of some elective surgery to make way for the acute cases.
The Auckland District Health Board weekly tally has risen by 10 per cent in a year, and Waitemata’s monthly count for January was up 11 per cent on December.
Hospitals aren’t sure of all the reasons but say it’s partly a growing and ageing population; Middlemore has seen more road-crash victims and the complexity of cases has increased, requiring longer operations.
Myrie Edwards lay for five days in a Middlemore bed waiting for swelling to go down before surgery could be considered for her right ankle, dislocated and broken by an offbalance moment on steps.
Then a six-day wait ensued during which she was repeatedly told she would get the operation, only to be bumped off the theatre list by patients deemed in greater need.
“It’s debilitating. I’m normally a happy-go-lucky person but I got really, really depressed since I was here. All day Monday I was in tears,” said Edwards, 47, a mother and parttime cleaner from Mangatawhiri, southeast of Auckland.
“You get your hopes up when they say, ‘ You’re top of the list,’ [but then they say] they’ve got other acute patients who need to go in first.”
To prepare for surgery, she couldn’t eat or drink after 2am, only to be told about 7.30pm, more than 17 hours later, that the operation wouldn’t happen that day and she could have a meal and drink.
Edwards received her operation, in which a metal plate was screwed into her ankle, on Tuesday and wonders if the Herald’s involvement played a role.
“I told them I was talking to the Herald and I went straight in.”
However, the Counties Manukau DHB said treatment timing was based on patients’ clinical risk and the availability of staff and theatres.
Edwards and her husband, Tony, are speaking out to help prevent others suffering the same fate.
“They need to get . . . sorted. We hope we can get the DHB to pull their finger and do something, because it’s ridiculous,” Myrie Edwards said.
But she praised her nurses and said the deputy head of orthopaedic surgery, Richard Steel, had visited her to deliver a personal apology.
He attributed her delay partly to elderly patients needing to be treated first because of the risk of death if they had to wait.
“The difficulty is that we have had unprecedented demand for acute services ... It’s got a little bit crazy.”
The peak came the weekend before last, with more than 30 patients waiting for acute surgery on the Monday.
Middlemore treated around 180 acute orthopaedic surgery patients in January, up from 100 last February.