Praneeta Mahajan
Hamilton, August 7, 2023
Waikato Hospital, a frontrunner for all health services across the Waikato region, is overwhelming everyone involved with the establishment with conditions that are simply unacceptable as normal functioning standards.
The patients have constantly been complaining about the wait times and poor infrastructure at the hospital, while the surgeons are unhappy with the lack of support and staff shortages which are causing immense delays. The latest blow to the hospital’s reputation comes with the nurses and administrative staff, the frontline workers stating their place of work as ‘unsafe.’
Chronic fatigue, anxiety, excessive workload, stress and worsening work conditions are some reasons that have driven the nurses to the point of raising the matter by issuing a provisional improvement notice (PIN) to Waikato Hospital’s Emergency Department (ED) in response to health and safety concerns arising from unsafe staffing levels.
The PIN was issued last week by Janferie Dewar, a registered nurse who is also the Health and Safety Representative (HSR) for the ED, because severe staff shortages and unreasonable and unmanageable workloads have made the ED critically unsafe, and led to increased sick leave, burnouts and resignations.
The issuing of the PIN came right after Hato Hone St John declared a significant incident for Waikato on Monday, July 31, 2023, when ambulances had to wait with patients at the hospital for a record number of hours.
Record Ramping hours
Hato Hone St John’s deputy chief executive Dan Ohs said it experienced the highest ramping hours when ambulance staff spent more than thirty minutes handing over the care of a patient to the hospital.
“At the peak on Monday, 12 ambulances were ramped at Waikato Hospital, with five patients in serious condition,” Mr Ohs said.
He said ramping hours were up the same day across the country with 204 ramping hours recorded, compared to the winter average of 130 hours, 60 of those recorded hours were in Waikato.
As a result of the ramping, Hato Hone St John declared a major incident in Waikato. “Other ambulance resources were used from around the district to maintain a safe response to patients,” Ohs said.
The Clarification
Te Whatu Ora Waikato said a higher-than-normal number of patients (85) arrived at Waikato Hospital by ambulance that day. Spokesperson Michelle Sutherland said this led to the highest ramping hours they have on record at the hospital. “Waikato Hospital’s ED is currently fully recruited for medical staff and health care assistants in ED and nearly fully recruited for nursing staff,” she said.
The New Zealand Nurses Organisation, Tōpūtanga Tapuhi Kaitiaki o Aotearoa (NZNO) said that it has supported the issuing of the PIN, which legally requires an employer or service provider to address a health and safety issue before a specific time (in this case within nine days) and is a decisive step employees can take through their health and safety representative (HSR).
The ground reality
A nurse working her shift in the ED on the day spoke exclusively to Indian Newslink and said, “It was a breaking point for everyone on the floor that day. The patients and the staff were as helpless and overwhelmed as the patients. After the day was over, I went back home and decided to look for other employment as continuing work at the Waikato Hospital is going to break my spirit.”
Ms Dewar said that although she issued the PIN representing workers in the ED, more than 150 staff across the hospital have signed the document in support of the notice, ranging from nurses to healthcare assistants, students, cleaners, paramedics and doctors.
“The PIN was also endorsed by a health and safety working group of 35 NZNO delegates and external health and safety advisors because, even after three letters of recommendation to Te Whatu Ora Waikato management since April this year, the health and safety risks in the ED have not been addressed to anywhere near an acceptable level.
“Despite ongoing meetings with management nothing significant has changed even though the ED is almost in code red by default. We are at the point now where staff have had enough.”
Other issues raised
Other issues addressed by the PIN include Waikato Hospital not training health and safety representatives to the required NZQA standard (so they are not qualified to issue PINs), staffing levels significantly below requirements regularly and the hospital not following its policies around escalation when safety risks become critical.
“There has been a fundamental non-compliance with the employer’s primary duty of care to keep staff safe and provide reasonable workloads,” Ms Dewar said.
“Other big employers in New Zealand have to comply with the Health and Safety Act by managing risk and ensuring workloads are reasonable for workers. Te Whatu Ora is an employer and should not be exempt from the law. It is just not physically possible for one person to do the work of two or three nurses, but that is what is regularly required of staff, and the result has been chronic fatigue and anxiety. Their only relief from work stress is a quick and quiet cry in the toilets.”
“Staff turnover is unprecedented, and a number are on stress leave as we speak so the situation just continues to worsen. The ED is in critical care deficit by the organisation’s own risk scoring and this PIN is because the hospital is failing to meet its obligations under the Health and Safety Act.”
Te Whatu Ora Waikato management has until 11 August to comply with the PIN’s recommendations.
Praneeta Mahajan is an Indian Newslink reporter based in Hamilton.
