Many doctors at Palmerston North Hospital operate under a siege mentality, where they fear speaking out about concerns, and they often face barriers when trying to transfer patients between departments, according to a damning new report.<\/p>\n
The report was commissioned after the death of a heavily pregnant woman early last year, when the woman’s admission to the hospital’s intensive care unit with sepsis was delayed. Her child was stillborn.<\/p>\n
Completed this month, the Review of Culture and Climate amongst Medical Staff interviewed senior and junior doctors in March and has published a summary of their comments without naming them.<\/p>\n
Report author Jonathan Black, a chartered organisational psychologist, made seven recommendations.<\/p>\n
One of them was to clarify “pathway of care expectations” when patients were referred between departments and specialities.<\/p>\n
This would minimise or remove the “influence of idiosyncratic approaches” from doctors or surgeons. Such approaches created “inconsistency and unnecessary anxiety for a patient and treating physician(s)”, Black said in his report, which RNZ has obtained.<\/p>\n
The pregnant woman’s delayed admission to the intensive care unit lasted several hours, as her condition worsened, and despite it being clear she was critically ill.<\/p>\n
The woman, whose death was before the coroner, arrived at hospital in the early hours of the morning one day in February last year, with signs of severe sepsis. She only made it to intensive care in the evening and died later that night.<\/p>\n
Black recommended Te Whatu Ora MidCentral urgently consider funding a dedicated high-dependency unit and better resource intensive care.<\/p>\n
High-dependency units were for patients who fall short of needing the critical support intensive care provides, but were still seriously ill.<\/p>\n
Palmerston North did not have such a unit, but late last year Te Whatu Ora MidCentral district director Dr Jeff Brown said a refurbished eight-bed intensive care\/high-dependency unit was expected to be fully staffed by mid-2023.<\/p>\n
And, RNZ revealed, despite concerns about the limitations the intensive care unit surfacing more than a decade ago, a new acute services facility at the hospital was at least six years away.<\/p>\n
Other recommendations related to concerns about raising problems, including creating a professional communication committee “as a means to raise, address and resolve workplace relationship challenges at SMO level”. SMO means specialist medical officer, such as a doctor or surgeon who works in a particular field.<\/p>\n
Black recommended Te Whatu Ora MidCentral urgently consider funding a common area for specialist medical officers, and junior staff, and funding a supervision programme.<\/p>\n
Many doctors at Palmerston North Hospital operate under a siege mentality, where they fear speaking out about concerns, and they often face barriers when trying to transfer patients between departments, according to a damning new report. The report was commissioned after the death of a heavily pregnant woman early last year, when the woman’s admission […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":5015,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[222,174],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5014","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\/5014","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=5014"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5014\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5016,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5014\/revisions\/5016"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/5015"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5014"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5014"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5014"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}