A case of too many patients for Rotorua hospital

ROTORUA - Patients are being sent home from Rotorua Hospital because of a shortage of beds.

A nursing shortage at the hospital was adding pressure to already stretched resources, doctors said yesterday.

The nursing shortage meant the hospital could service fewer beds.

As a result, patients who might otherwise have been admitted for further investigation or observation were being sent home.

The Nurses Organisation confirmed there was a shortage of nurses in Rotorua in spite of the hospital's efforts to recruit and retain staff.

Lakeland Health was unable to confirm the number of nursing vacancies or whether patients had been sent home because of inadequate nursing levels.

Medical registrar Dr John Bonning said Rotorua Hospital was tremendously short of nurses and, therefore, beds.

One day last week he had to send home at least four people he would have admitted had there been beds available .

Dr Bonning said he had to advise them to go back to their GPs instead.

In mid-July Lakeland Health was trying to fill 22 nursing vacancies, including five in the adult surgical ward.

The staff shortage was a factor in the cancellation of seven surgery lists involving 39 patients in the preceding month.

A spokeswoman for the Nurses Organisation, Gwenda Brodie, said experienced nurses were leaving the profession because they had had enough of the pressures and the difficulties.

While salaries and conditions were at issue, a lack of professional respect and the effects of restructuring also figured.

The reintroduction of enrolled nurse training would go a long way towards addressing the country's chronic nursing shortage, Ms Brodie said.

Health Minister Annette King had planned to re-establish the programme within the first 12 months of the Labour Government.

Although that was unlikely, Ms Brodie said, there appeared to be a real commitment to reinstate the training.

"Reinstating this programme will do a good deal to help alleviate nursing shortages ... but it's a down-the-track thing which will be of benefit once we have people graduating."

- NZPA