500 patients in one day
Genuinely afraid, stressed, tired and facing ‘‘constant extra demand’’.
That’s how one general practitioner described the state of New Zealand’s health system right now.
Speaking at his Fifth Avenue Family Practice in Tauranga, Dr Luke Bradford said that on Friday between 12 doctors, two nurses and phone consultations, they saw more than 500 patients.
Before Stuff arrived at 11.30am he had already seen 13 patients himself. ‘‘Then another 13, then I’m the acute doctor this evening. Then I’ll work over the weekend. That’s what we do.’’
None of this included dealing with the 65 test results he’d received that morning, or the 45 items sitting in his ‘‘task bar’’.
When asked about Health Minister Andrew Little’s comments just a few weeks earlier, which acknowledged the pressure on hospitals but described the overall system as ‘‘coping’’, there’s a long pause.
‘‘The system, as much as it’s able, won’t let people fall over,’’ he said. ‘‘There’s those terrible tragedies, but staff will do their damndest so when you’re acutely unwell, they’ll stand up. But we are creating a huge backlog.
‘‘Staff in primary care and secondary care are genuinely afraid, stressed and tired, and there’s this constant extra demand.’’
Bradford is well aware of how politicised the issue is at present, and keen to stress he is speaking in his capacity as a GP, and pragmatic about arguments about whether Little deems the situation a crisis or not.
‘‘If you say publicly the health system isn’t coping, you’ll create mass panic.’’
Bradford is pragmatic too about the wider health system, and agrees it’s facing something of a perfect storm at present of Covid, delays in other treatments caused by Covid and the winter flu season.
Staff shortages are biting too. ‘‘We’ve got a lot of people off because of respiratory illnesses and it’s really difficult to recruit, same as every occupation at the moment. We’ve got massive nurse shortages in primary care, more so than in secondary care, because in primary care there’s a perceived pay disparity.’’
He said at his practice they will need to recruit two additional doctors this year, something that in the past he said would be done easily. ‘‘For the first time ever we need two by the end of the year, and I don’t know where I’m going to find them.’’
He has mixed views of the sweeping reforms the sector is undergoing, though he is entirely supportive of the need for change and admits reform is ‘‘a really good long term aim’’.
‘‘I think the acknowledgement and intention that we really are failing in Māori health especially, [and the] genuine intention that that needs to change will help society as a whole,’’ he said.
‘‘But quite clearly primary care has been left – ‘we’ll come to you later and we want to make sure hospitals are OK’ – there’s some sense in that.’’
Bradford’s concern with the
reforms is that he simply does not know what they will mean for general practice yet. ‘‘The front line would like to hear more about how the reforms are going to come to their assistance and their patients’ assistance than how many nice ceremonies we’re having and flowery words,’’ he said.
‘‘The purpose of the authority isn’t clear. [There is] nothing yet in the health reforms for how it will help general practice, and general practice is tired and stressed and anxious that it’s been expected to manage.’’
His pragmatic streak shows again when he admits that throwing money at the health sector isn’t the sole solution either. ‘‘It would be a bottomless pit, and we’re a country of 5 million.’’