A man has driven a car directly towards a packed North Shore Hospital emergency department (ED), crashing into bollards right outside the door.<\/p>\n
RNZ understands he had been at the hospital’s ED a short time before on Saturday night.<\/p>\n
Sarah Dalton, executive director of the Association of Salaried Medical Specialists, said there were a lot of patients waiting by the door when the crash happened.<\/p>\n
The union had been talking to doctors about it.<\/p>\n
“We know that they’re incredibly grateful that there were bollards in place because if there hadn’t been there would have been considerable numbers of people hurt,” she said.<\/p>\n
North Shore Hospital said the bollards prevented the car from making contact with the building – which is what they were designed to do.<\/p>\n
Dalton said health workers were worried about security at emergency departments around the country. There was also concern about the long waits, particularly for acute mental health patients.<\/p>\n
“I do want to emphasise that we know that most people needing to be admitted for mental healthcare are not dangerous and are not violent,” she said.<\/p>\n
“But nonetheless those very busy, very overcrowded EDs are utterly unsuited to the needs of those people.”<\/p>\n
A 42-year-old man has been charged with reckless driving, intentional damage, threatening to kill and possession of a knife in connection with the crash.<\/p>\n
Last year, the hospital said it was increasing security after an incident in which one patient abused a nurse and then punched another patient who stepped in to help.<\/p>\n
Source RNZ<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A man has driven a car directly towards a packed North Shore Hospital emergency department (ED), crashing into bollards right outside the door. RNZ understands he had been at the hospital’s ED a short time before on Saturday night. Sarah Dalton, executive director of the Association of Salaried Medical Specialists, said there were a lot […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":4643,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[174],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4642","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-nz-news"],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4642","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=4642"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4642\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4644,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4642\/revisions\/4644"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/4643"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4642"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4642"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4642"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}