“Our Health System needs Life Support”is the title of a thread today on Trademe.co.nz. Here’s what caused it

The DHB, which covers Otago and Southland, has lost its full accreditation to train doctors and has only been given interim approval.

From 30 November, the annual intake of new doctors, fresh from medical school, will begin in hospitals nationwide.

But the Medical Council’s report on the Southern DHB‘s training uncovered 19 failings including no formal orientation for new doctors, no manager being responsible for supervision and no requirement for doctors to do handovers about patients.

Resident Doctors’ Association national president Dr Deborah Powell said the Southern DHB had only just scraped through its assessment by the Medical Council’s team. “SDHB passed its last MCNZ accreditation three years ago, so these failures have come about in a reasonably short timeframe and under the incumbent management,” Dr Powell said.

“It also comes on top of Southern DHB’s ICU [intensive care unit] department losing training accreditation for 2015/2016, and the New Zealand Orthopaedic Association withdrawing advanced orthopaedic trainees from Dunedin Hospital effective December 2015.” …source

Major equipment failures, patients at risk

Last year an Official Information Act request by Annette King revealed there had been major equipment failures, including power outages to wards and an incident in 2014 where a public lift “free fell”down five storeys.

In April One News broadcast a story from a whistleblowing nurse who said that Dunedin Hospital’s facilities were putting patients at risk

ONE News has spoken to a senior nurse and health and safety representative at the hospital who says it’s now so bad operations are sometimes being delayed. Deslee Howell has had enough of the hospital facilities after working there for the past 14 years. “This is patient safety that we are putting at risk. We’ve got new health and safety legislation coming in in 2015 and I don’t think we’re going to do well,” says Ms Howell.

“If we had been a factory we’d have been shut down”

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More than 500 New Zealand patients suffered after medical blunders in the last year (4 Dec 2015) About 1 in 10 patients will be involved in an adverse event:

More than 500 New Zealand patients suffered after medical blunders in the last year

A record number of medical mishaps have been reported in New Zealand, with more than 500 in the past year.

The Health Quality and Safety Commission (HQSC) has released its annual list of “adverse events” in the year to June 2015, instances where patients suffered after stuff-ups in their care. They cover errors that have caused serious harm to patients, such as death, injury or loss of quality of life, and also “near misses”.

It show 525 events were reported, up from 454 the previous year. Of these, 74 people died, although not necessarily because of the medical error…

The report does not cover mistakes made in ambulances or most mental health services.

 

Nervous staff want asbestos answers

Staff at Dunedin Hospital are nervous in the wake of the clinical services building asbestos scare, and want to know the cause of the contamination, health multi-union spokeswoman Deborah Powell says.

Southern District Health Board’s defecit released by mistake

A formatting error has been blamed by the Southern District Health Board after it inadvertently released its projected annual deficit. The figure of $39.7million was included in a finance report, but was removed from the board’s website after the Otago Daily Times asked about it this week.

The board was sacked in June and replaced by a commissioner. At that stage, it was thought the shortfall could be as high as $42million. Commissioner Kathy Grant said the board was still working through the approval process for its annual budget with the Ministry of Health, and the deficit was unconfirmed. She confirmed $39.7million was the working deficit figure…

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