'Absolute nightmare' - patients left waiting in soiled beds at North Shore emergency department
Patients are waiting in soiled beds at North Shore Hospital's emergency department and nurses say conditions are so bad it feels feral.
One hundred and twenty nurses have written to Health NZ chief executive Dale Bramley, saying the ED is in its own state of emergency.
Health NZ had failed to plan properly for winter and had not hired the nurses it had agreed to, the letter said.
North Shore ED charge nurse Jean Classey told RNZ the ED had been so busy it felt "feral", with people unable to even fit in the waiting rooms.
It was hard seeing people crammed into corridors, and brightly lit public spaces with no privacy.
Sometimes incontinent people were waiting in wet beds until nurses could find a space to change them, she said
"It's an absolute nightmare. It feels like we're at war," she said.
Classey, like all the nurses in this story, is a NZ Nurses Organisation delegate which gives them some protection for speaking out.
The vast majority of nurses in the department signed the letter to Bramley.
Health NZ said it had a winter plan running that was helping, but the emergency departments at North Shore and Waitakere Hospitals were having their busiest ever winter.
Between them, there had been nearly 14,000 patients through the doors in July, it said.
But the nurses' letter said the crisis was "entirely predictable."
"Health New Zealand failed to adequately plan for winter demand, placing patients and staff at unnecessary risk," it said.
Some of the problems outlined included:
- patients waiting 90 minutes to be triaged
- heart scans that should be done immediately, taking hours
- patients waiting more than 50 hours in the ED for a bed in the hospital
- patients missing essential medications
- patients left in soiled beds in overcrowded corridors
- the department at 300 percent capacity at times.
Health NZ had agreed to hire 25 nurses for the department but only nine had come, the nurses said.
Line of grey heads
Nurses spoken to be RNZ said it was often impossible for people to get privacy in the ED when they were feeling at their worst.
Sharon Franklin-Smith said she sometimes looked down to see a line of grey heads - people in their 80s or 90s - being cared for in the corridor.
That meant a lack of dignity and respect.
"That's someone's mother, grandmother and it breaks my heart, it absolutely breaks my heart." she said.
Jean Moor has been a nurse for 35 years and said it was the worst she had seen it.
Nurses were juggling caring for their own patients, keeping an eye on those waiting, and trying to organise assessments and treatments.
"You're running, you're constantly working really hard, your brain is in overdrive," she said.
Like many of the nurses she often got home hoping no one had died because they had not got the care they needed.
Health NZ starts some hiring
The day after it received the letter, Health NZ announced Friday it had started recruitment for 50 new nurses for North Shore and Waitakere Hospitals - both are operated by Health NZ's Waitematā district.
Nine would be for the North Shore emergency department.
Health NZ group director of operations Brad Healey said in a statement that Health NZ would also hire 10 nurses and 14 health care assistants that would be in a central team to be dispatched where needed in the hospitals.
"The additional staff in the centralised nursing team gives us greater flexibility to respond to surges in demand and also cover unplanned leave," he said.
The organisation's winter plan had helped care for more patients in the community and moved people quickly through the hospitals to free up space - but the demand this season had been much higher than previous years, he said.
Healey said the hospitals has "amazing staff" and he hoped the recruitment would ease the load.
Chief executive Dale Bramley said last week seriously ill people should always still go to an emergency department where they will get priority care.
But the North Shore ED nurses said nine new nurses announced Friday was not enough.
Health NZ had earlier agreed to 25 but had so far only hired nine, as part of a recruitment go-slow, they said.
The department now needed even more to cope with the numbers through the doors, the nurses said.
Health NZ did not respond to RNZ's request about the letters detailed claims about care in the department.