OPINION: Saying I work in the busiest Emergency Department in Australasia is nothing short of an understatement.
We have, and always will be extremely busy and under-resourced however we have previously just ‘carried on’ and muddled our way through ‘the bad days’ in one way or another, but something has changed and it’s terrifying.
It is not uncommon for us to have up to 200 patients in ED at any one time with 60 plus patients waiting for a bed on the ward but there is simply no capacity to provide this.
Everyday we are bed blocked and everyday the situation becomes more dire. We have an amazing team of managers, ACNMs and doctors in our emergency department who go above and beyond trying to support us on the floor yet there is only so much they can do, I understand they do their best but ultimately their hands are tied too.
Just as recent media attention has highlighted our hospital system is reaching an absolute breaking point and as a nurse on the floor. I simply can’t understand why the Government is burying their heads in the sand.
Every time I hear the Government is giving away money to fund another necessary project or ‘legacy‘ if you will, it breaks my heart, I just can’t understand why.
Why won’t they get their heads out of the sand and look after our own? Why can’t they provide the extra resources we need to ensure every New Zealander has access to the medical care they require in a timely manner?
I challenge Jacinda Adern and Andrew Little to sit on the floor in the waiting room of ED for 10+hours waiting to be seen with their ankle fracture as there is simply nowhere else to sit in that area, all because they are simply one of 48 patients waiting to be seen at the time.
Perhaps they would like to experience what it is like to lie in a bed plonked in a corridor of the ED for everyone to see, not attached to any sort of cardiac monitoring because we simply don’t have enough telemetry sets to monitor their cardiac sounding chest pain.
This sadly is a daily occurrence and a reality for so many of our patients.
Maybe Jacinda or Andrew would like to visit the paediatric emergency department and line up in a corridor waiting to be triaged with a baby working so hard to breathe because they have RSV but can’t be prioritised because we had 10 more of the same presentation just arrived in the minutes before them.
Maybe just maybe they would prefer to be sat in a waiting room for 6+hours with their 10-month-old baby that has a finger injury who has no choice but to stay and wait as it requires the specialist care of the Hands team despite being coughed all over by a three-year-old with RSV because we simply don’t have to resources to accommodate isolating any infectious children due to lack of beds.
I mean what will it take for them to wake up? These system failures are well above the DHBs ability to fix, we are at a point where we have not enough space/beds in our EDs let alone enough nurses, doctors, healthcare assistants and so on to care for our population. I’m terrified of what’s to come and we desperately need an intervention.
My colleagues and I receive messages on a daily basis requesting, sometimes begging, for staff, sometimes we have up to 12 gaps on the roster per day in ED alone.
Every day I have off I struggle as to whether I should just pick up an extra shift or not because:
- I want to support the dept and ensure my colleagues are not working in an unsafe environment (as I know they all do the same for me)
- To ensure patients receive adequate care
- To earn more money for my family to simply afford a semi-decent life
I struggle with this because in the end the overtime is at the expense of my health and well being and ultimately is unsustainable, last fortnight I worked just shy of 40hrs overtime on top of my contracted 60hrs and am now paying for that by having nothing ‘left in the tank’ and for that my family also suffer as I don’t have the energy for them.
We have had so many nurses leave in the past few months cause they’ve simply had enough, one week there were nine resignations alone.
We can’t afford to lose anymore.
They are fleeing to Australia in their droves for better pay, better nurse/patient ratios and better work/life balance, it’s an absolute no-brainer and I don’t blame them! Our current resources allow me to provide a bare minimum of care at best and this plays on my mind every shift I work. I choose this profession because I want to care for people, I want to make a difference in their lives!
I appeal to every resident of New Zealand when I say support us. Help us, help everyone who needs medical care in NZ get the care they deserve, help us hold the government to account, help us change what has been neglected for so long, please we beg you!!
Sincerely,
A worried nurse who is unable to sleep at night worrying not if but when a catastrophic event will occur in our Emergency Department.
The author has been a nurse for 13 years and worked in the emergency department for the past eight.
