Lessons from a sick health system
There’s a woman crying softly in the flu symptom section and even from where I’m sitting I can see she’s awfully unwell.
She’s got the flushed skin and damp hair that’s always a dead giveaway of illness, as is the exhaustion writ large on her face.
But the baby she’s holding looks even worse than she does and, after screaming for the past hour or so, has fallen worryingly silent. A nurse takes his temperature, brings his mother a cup of water and apologises again. ‘‘I’ll get you through just as soon as I can,’’ she says through her mask, ‘‘I’m so sorry about this.’’
On Monday the emergency department waiting room is packed with people who can’t afford a doctor, can’t get a doctor’s appointment or are in dire need of emergency care. A few are rightly here because it’s a warm place with free internet, and I suspect at least a couple are hypochondriacs. I’ve been worrying I might be slotted into the latter category but the doctor who sent me here has assured me I’m definitely in need of help; it’s immediately apparent our health system is as well.
It’d be a rare New Zealander who enters any ED unaware what they’re going to be in for. It’s in these rooms that the ailing health system is on full display as sick and scared Kiwis endure unthinkable waits for care we are entitled to.
Just last week it was revealed a patient waited the equivalent of a working week to be processed in Waikato Hospital’s ED in February. Others at the same hospital complained of waiting more than 10 hours earlier this year, and patients arriving at Nelson Hospital’s emergency department on Anzac Day had to be triaged in a tent outside after the hospital
‘‘simply ran out of beds’’.
And just six months ago an Australasian College of Emergency Medicine spokesman said patients with lifethreatening conditions were facing waits up to 24 hours in the country’s EDs.
To criticise the waiting times is not to criticise those who are trying their utmost to care for us. The nurses I’ve been watching for hours are remarkable: I’ve seen them yelled at, sworn at and constantly spoken to in those tones the sick use when demanding something from the well.
And whether those nurses are comforting people, filling out forms, taking blood pressure or giving out panadol, always they’re apologising to the waiting horde.
There’s a man with a sling, a kid with a sick bowl, a teen in a wheelchair and a toddler with a purple egg blooming on his forehead.
There’s a tradie talking loudly on the phone, promising he’ll be back to work as soon as he gets a gash in his head stitched.
There’s a little grey woman patting the hand of a little grey man. The pair are as delicate as baby sparrows and her eyes are sick with worry.
There’s a very pregnant woman looking very numb; a man in a suit looking scared and a lady sound asleep against the wall.
Unlike those who’ve sworn, yelled or complained, all of these people just sit and patiently wait and deflect the nurse’s apologies. I’ve been here for three hours and the lady with the baby was here when I arrived; we both watch as the little grey sparrows give up their wait and totter out the doors.
And the only thing worse than watching them leave is hearing the nurse trying to convince them to stay. ‘‘You really need to see a doctor,’’ I hear her plead. ‘‘Can you wait just a little bit longer?’’
❚ Virginia Fallon is a Stuff senior writer and columnist.