If there has been a perception that the emergency department
of Dunedin Hospital has for some years stumbled from one
crisis to the next, then the latest revelations concerning
staffing do little to assuage that image.
Health Minister Tony Ryall has rejected a request by the
senior doctors' union to intervene in a staffing numbers
issue at Dunedin Hospital's emergency department (ED).
A senior Dunedin
Hospital emergency department specialist says Southern
District Health Board management appear to have backtracked
on recruiting an extra 4.5 senior medical officers for the
department.
Improvements to the way
patients' allergies are recorded will flow from the planned
extension of the hospital electronic prescribing system
piloted at Dunedin Hospital, hospital information technology
clinical leader Dr Andrew Bowers says.
Staying times at Dunedin Hospital's emergency department have
improved considerably in recent months but there is still
much work to be done, Mike Hunter says.
Delays in recruiting
anaesthetists to allow extra acute surgery at Dunedin
Hospital illustrates the country's continuing specialist
workforce crisis, Associated Salaried Medical Specialists
executive director Ian Powell says.
The death of a 74-year-old woman from a severe reaction to an
antibiotic which caused a 60% skin loss was "very, very rare"
, southern regional coroner David Crerar says in his finding
on the death.
Dunedin Hospital's emergency department does not often see
patients who have swallowed button-sized batteries, ED
clinical leader Dr Tim Kerruish says.
