{"id":11030,"date":"2024-08-16T05:22:31","date_gmt":"2024-08-15T17:22:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/?p=11030"},"modified":"2024-08-16T05:22:31","modified_gmt":"2024-08-15T17:22:31","slug":"bay-of-islands-hospital-doctors-speak-out-as-new-patients-to-be-turned-away-we-are-now-at-our-limit","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/?p=11030","title":{"rendered":"Bay of Islands Hospital doctors speak out as new patients to be turned away: &#8216;We are now at our limit&#8217;"},"content":{"rendered":"<ul>\n<li><b>Doctors say Bay of Islands Hospital in Kawakawa will not have enough staff this weekend or in weekends to come<\/b><\/li>\n<li><b>The ED will stay open but new patients will be sent to other hospitals instead of being admitted<\/b><\/li>\n<li><b>Doctors say a hefty pay cut for short-term staff is part of the problem<\/b><\/li>\n<li><b>Stressed doctors say they&#8217;ve reached their limit and can&#8217;t keep working longer hours<\/b><\/li>\n<li><b>Health NZ acknowledges the situation is tough, but says it&#8217;s doing what it can to recruit more doctors<\/b><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Overworked doctors at beleaguered Bay of Islands Hospital say any new patients will have to be sent to other hospitals this weekend &#8211; and in weekends to come &#8211; because there won&#8217;t be enough medical staff to look after them.<\/p>\n<p>The doctors said they had reached their limits and were speaking out, despite a ban on talking to the media, because they had a duty of care to the community.<\/p>\n<p>In a statement sent to RNZ, the doctors said they had opted to put the few staff they had in the Emergency Department so it could keep functioning over the weekend.<\/p>\n<p>That meant, however, any new patients who would normally be admitted to the hospital&#8217;s 20-bed ward would instead be sent elsewhere.<\/p>\n<p>It was also likely to mean longer wait times in ED.<\/p>\n<p>The doctors, who wanted to remain anonymous, said they had been forced to prioritise the emergency department because two-thirds of patients arriving at Bay of Islands ED had potentially life-threatening problems.<\/p>\n<p>The crisis at Bay of Islands Hospital, in Kawakawa, follows staff shortages at Dargaville Hospital, which made headlines last month when it was unable to provide overnight doctor care, and R\u0101wene Hospital, which ended its after-hours doctor service in 2022.<\/p>\n<p>Senior doctors in Northland have been warning for some time that Kawakawa would be &#8220;the next domino to fall&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p>rnz<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Doctors say Bay of Islands Hospital in Kawakawa will not have enough staff this weekend or in weekends to come The ED will stay open but new patients will be sent to other hospitals instead of being admitted Doctors say a hefty pay cut for short-term staff is part of the problem Stressed doctors say [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":11031,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[222,174],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11030","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-latest-news","category-nz-news"],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11030","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=11030"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11030\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11032,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11030\/revisions\/11032"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/11031"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=11030"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=11030"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=11030"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}