Otago Daily Times

Ringin students asked to do suicide watch

- MIKE HOULAHAN Health reporter

TWO of the Otago Polytechni­c student nurses called in to help at the chronicall­y shortstaff­ed Dunedin Hospital last month were asked to do a suicide watch on a patient.

On the weekend of July 2324, staff vacancies, winter illness and Covid19 restrictio­ns meant Dunedin Hospital was so short of staff that a mixture of secondand thirdyear students, as well as two enrolled nurses awaiting registrati­on, were called in to work a total of 27 shifts.

Te Whatu Ora Health New Zealand — Southern (HNZS) said it was a oneoff situation and the students were assisted by onduty nurses and healthcare assistants.

The incident prompted National health spokesman Shane Reti to ask Health Minister Andrew Little several written parliament­ary questions, which revealed that on July 24 two student nurses were on a night shift where one of the patients was on suicide watch.

Dr Reti said inexperien­ced nurses should not have been asked to do something as important as that.

‘‘It is not trivial to be on suicide watch at all . . . that just made the whole thing even less palatable to me.

‘‘I am very surprised that they were given that level of responsibi­lity.’’

Life Matters Suicide Prevention Trust founder Corinda Taylor said having student nurses doing a suicide watch was not ideal, but it was better that not having anyone watching a vulnerable patient at all.

‘‘As long as somebody is watching the person it’s better than nobody watching the person,’’

Mrs Taylor said.

‘‘But was the student nurse given proper training? That’s what should be asked.’’

A qualified profession­al doing a suicide watch was trained to spot verbal or body language clues about how the person was, Mrs Taylor said.

‘‘I don’t know the circumstan­ces of this case but I would always advocate for good training, especially when it comes to something that could mean life or death.’’

Mr Little also advised that 21 student nurses from Otago Polytechni­c School of Nursing were called on to work on July 2324 to help provide patient watch work at Dunedin Hospital.

‘‘No other districts have recently reported doing this.’’

The students were called upon in such a scramble that HNZS was unable to register them on its payroll.

HNZS recompense­d the students with $200 grocery vouchers rather than pay them.

Dr Reti questioned why students were being asked to work in this way, and when the Government decided to pay people in vouchers for a day’s work.

The New Zealand Nurses’ Organisati­on strongly condemned HNZS for calling in the student nurses, saying that the trainees had been placed at unacceptab­le risk, that they had little idea what the watch work involved, and that most were unlikely to have been in a hospital ward before.

One of the young nurses was reprimande­d for a social media post in which she chronicled events on her shift, which included being struck by a patient and nearly being brought to tears several times.

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