Source: Association of Salaried Medical Specialists
The review of Nelson Hospital released by Health New Zealand today is little more than a ‘plan to make a plan’ the Association of Salaried Medical Specialists says.
The review just restates well-established problems with leadership and severe understaffing at Nelson Hospital which are causing delayed care for hundreds of patients.
The Nelson Review was commissioned after Senior Medical Officers spoke to media in March about the poor working conditions. Doctors, fed up with inaction, described massive wait times for first specialist appointments, and repeated refusals from leadership to address staffing shortages across many departments.
This prompted Health New Zealand’s chief clinical officer Richard Sullivan to commission a review. He said, “I would hope we will have some answers within weeks.”
“Four months later and all we have is a a plan to make a plan,” ASMS executive director Sarah Dalton says.”
Doctors, nurses and patients want solutions to these ongoing problems, not a bland description of known issues leadership should have addressed years ago.
“The review lacks timeframes, holds no leaders to account for these failures. Just last month Nelson Hospital was again in the news for booking “ghost clinics” in what appears to be an attempt to game the system in regard to first specialists’ appointments numbers.
“There is a worrying trend of poor management and poor leadership at Nelson Hospital which the review fails to address.”ASMS is disappointed there has been little engagement with hospital staff – and no consultation as to the review’s findings and recommendations.
“We understand regional deputy chief executive Martin Keogh and National Chief Clinical Officer Dame Helen Stokes-Lampard presented the report to just a handful of senior staff and gave other staff just 24 hours’ notice to a 30-minute briefing.
“This is a wasted opportunity to make positive change.”Dalton says the real finding from the review is that the issues at Nelson are present in other hospitals around the motu.
“The review uses comparative data that paints the dire picture of medical staffing gaps in similar sized hospitals across the country too. This aligns with our own findings.
We simply need more doctors,” she says.
“Short staffing and increased acute patient demand, coupled with a lack of accountability from our health leaders that allow hospitals to be so poorly staffed has bred a culture of getting by instead of getting ahead.”
