Worksafe staff will comb Lakes District Hospital for health and safety risks next week.
Southern regions assessment manager chief inspector Darren Handforth told the Otago Daily Times yesterday it was the start of a process which would determine if there were any risks to the health and safety of hospital staff at the ageing Frankton facility.
Earlier this week the ODT reported doctors and nurses were at breaking point, working over capacity in a hospital with no air conditioning during the hottest summer on record in the Wakatipu.
A source told the ODT the staff were working in "untenable" conditions, were "absolutely exhausted" and feared they would make "serious mistakes" because they were unable to think straight in high temperatures while making life-and-death decisions.
The ODT understands staff have filled out incident forms, brought up the issue at meetings with the Occupational Health Services manager and others within the organisation, to no avail.
In response to questions, Southern DHB chief executive Chris Fleming told the ODT the board had not been issued with any provisional improvement notices and had received six complaints over two years from staff in relation to heat — five in the past fortnight.
The ODT also asked if the DHB had studied the hospital to determine if heat, or heat stress, was a significant hazard for staff, and if it had used heart monitors on staff during higher metabolic load events or taken core body temperatures of staff following those events.
Mr Fleming said the DHB had not been monitoring staff during such events.
Mr Handforth said yesterday that response "appears, on the surface, not to follow a process of best practice".
"I will be taking a greater interest in this particular [matter] and I’m actually heading down to meet with the operations manager, workers and health and safety reps next Thursday afternoon to do a workplace assessment visit.
"[It] is the first kick-off of a process to ... make sure that we can satisfy ourselves that there are no risks to the health and safety of the workers at that facility.
"That has been very positively received by the operations manager and they’re looking forward to the visit," Mr Handforth said.
