Hospitals’ staffing ‘not keeping up’
A nurses’ union boss and former emergency department nurse says long stays in EDs are not isolated and hospitals should be better staffed.
Suzanne Rolls, professional nursing adviser for NZ Nurses’ Organisation, was speaking after a patient in Taranaki Base Hospital spent 26 hours in an ED bed before being admitted to a ward, prompting a medical professional to urge the patient and their family to lay a formal complaint.
The Ministry of Health target is for 95 per cent of patients to be admitted, discharged, or transferred from an ED within six hours. In the last quarter, district health boards (DHBs) achieved this for an average of 90.1 per cent. Over the past two years less than half of the country’s 20 DHBs met the target, with only four meeting it in the last quarter.
Rolls said patients needing to be admitted were getting delayed because of a lack of staff and beds across all areas of hospitals.
Rolls said emergency nurses nationwide were extremely overworked with the emergency workforce not increasing to meet growing demand.
The longer someone was in an emergency department, not only did it tie up that resource but it was also adverse for the patient who needed to be in the right location, Rolls said.
‘‘There are increases in the number of people who are more injured and more ill.’’ There was increasing throughput and more demand for care than there were spaces available.
Redirecting people to primary healthcare was not the way to solve the issue of long wait times and overcrowding either, Rolls said. ‘‘When people do turn up to ED, they still need to be seen.’’
Rolls said patients needed to be aware of their rights.
‘‘When someone is in ED far longer than they should be, that patient needs to be informed of their rights – one of those rights is the right to complain.’’
Rolls said DHBs should put their energy into fixing the issue rather than asking why a staff member would do that.
President Donald Trump and his defenders have spent the past few weeks attacking the process by which an impeachment inquiry has unfolded in the House. They have impugned the integrity of witnesses. They have engaged in publicity stunts, like when several dozen House members stormed the secure hearing room where depositions are heard.
The Trump administration, meanwhile, has defied subpoenas and withheld witnesses, while arguing that the House impeachment inquiry isn’t legitimate without a vote to formally launch one. Now they are going to get that vote. Better late than never, we suppose.
Yet no sooner had Trump said it was time to look at the substance of the impeachment inquiry, than he reverted to petty personal attacks. He called one witness, army Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman, a ‘‘Never Trumper’’ – a term generally applied to Republicans and independent conservatives who oppose him. In as much as Trump has previously called Never Trumpers ‘‘human scum’’, the logical inference is that the president is calling Vindman human scum. That’s pretty harsh for someone who has made military service his career, who is a combat veteran of Iraq and was awarded a Purple Heart after almost being killed by a roadside bombl.
Enough is enough. Stop the character assassinations. Call off the stupid stunts. Face the facts, which provide ample reasons for elevating the impeachment inquiry to the next level.