Upset at wait for emergency care, ring Andrew Little
A woman at Wellington Hospital’s overcrowded ED says a nurse gave her a laminated card with the Health Minister’s contact details so she could complain to him.
She took her teenage daughter to the emergency department this month and said she was shocked at how busy it was and how the nurses were run off their feet.
“Every cubicle and every corridor was full, people packed into every nook and cranny,” she said.
The staff who looked after them were “amazing”— compassionate and efficient — but several nurses appeared tired and stressed, she said.
Some were doing orderlies’ tasks because they were short-staffed.
The woman remarked to one nurse that the system appeared broken. “And she said, ‘Well if you’d like to talk to anyone about it, here’s the person to talk to’ and she handed over a tiny, little, square, laminated card with Andrew Little’s details on it,” she said.
It was his publicly available office email and phone number. “I said: ‘Oh this is great problem solving . . . you’ve got to talk to the person who can actually make a difference’.”
A family member immediately emailed Little to tell him about the experience, she said.
The woman has written a firsthand account of their experience that night, asking to stay anonymous to protect her daughter’s privacy.
When the pair initially turned up, they were 53rd in the queue and were told the wait could be six hours.
In the waiting room, she saw elderly people lying across plastic chairs while they were waiting and several vulnerable people.
She understood why the nurse was encouraging people to contact the minister and encouraged him to spend some time in an ED.
Little said he was not aware of any queries coming into his office as a result of the cards handed out.
Te Whatu Ora interim district director John Tait was not aware any staff were handing out cards with the minister’s official contacts and would prefer they used the hospital’s own complaints process.