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A mother and daughter who watched Waikato Hospital staff try to save a man found unconscious in an Emergency Department toilet have described the chaos as he was rushed through the packed waiting room on a gurney.
Health New Zealand/ Te Whatu Ora confirmed the male patient presented to ED on Monday night, and was triaged, but later found unconscious.
Efforts to resuscitate him were unsuccessful and he died.
Samantha Browne arrived at the ED with abdominal pain about 4.30pm on Monday, and was joined by her mum, Deanne, about half an hour later.
"When I got put into the waiting room, basically every single chair was filled," Browne said. "There was no room for Mum to sit when she arrived, meaning she had to stand, and there was a line out the door."
One man told them he had been waiting 14 hours, and another lady said she had been waiting six, after spending three at Anglesea Hospital first.
"It was very chaotic," Browne said.
"Both chaotic and also very stressful. The nurses were trying to do the best they could with the amount of people that they had - they were stressed and the patients were getting quite agitated."
Sometime between 1.30am and 2am, a woman rushed out of the toilet near the back of the waiting room, near where Browne and her mother were, and ran to the front desk, telling staff at the desk a man was unconscious on the floor.
A nurse went in to check, found the man and pressed the emergency buzzer. Then, Browne said, some 20 staff came running and yelling: "Get the crash cart, get the paddles on him".
Patients in the waiting room, including themselves, were moved out of the way, and the staff called for screens to shield the man from view, she said.
"One lady was trying not to cry - she was the one that went and notified the nurse."
About five minutes later, "they came wheeling him, running, there were like six people on the gurney, running with the gurney holding bottles and whatnot, and a nurse literally on top of him doing CPR, full noise, he was blue, it was quite horrible".
Browne said staff were obviously run off their feet. She waited four hours for pain relief and was not seen until about 10pm, six hours after arriving. They did not leave until 4am, and only received treatment in that last hour.
She had had two previous visits to ED in the past month, waiting nine hours on one occasion, and 13 hours the next.
Following Monday's incident, Browne said a nurse at the end of her shift went round the waiting room handing out complaint forms, urging patients to document their experiences, in hopes of receiving more resources and more staff.
Health NZ has opened a rapid clinical review, expected to be finished this week. A longer-term review would take place over the next two months.
It has declined to comment on the specifics of what happened, saying that was out of respect to the family and while the review is under way.
Cath Cronin, Health NZ executive regional director for Midland, told RNZ's Morning Report programme today the target time to get people through ED was six hours, but people were waiting longer.
This man "was waiting longer than we wanted him to be waiting, but I'm not going to quote the exact time because I think that needs to also be part of the clinical review", she said.
"There's a lot of commentary coming through, and we just need to make sure we've got the facts."
She said recently the Waikato ED had been operating at or over capacity, but she could not confirm whether it was understaffed.
"We aim to run that ED safely, and [staffing] is looked at every day."
The nurses' union is calling for an independent inquiry into the death.
Nurses Organisation chief executive Paul Goulter said New Zealanders needed to know their local EDs had enough staff.
Goulter said the public deserved better than obfuscation, and his members had little confidence in Health NZ reviewing its own processes.
This story was first published on rnz.co.nz |  |