KEY POINTS:
While there are no duty-free shops with the latest fragrances or cheap booze and not a single aircraft in sight, discharge patients in Waikato Hospital's transit lounge say their pending departure is a pleasant one.
Designed to reduce gridlock in wards and pressure on the emergency department waiting room, the transit lounge is proving a godsend for staff and patients unable to leave hospital because they are waiting for a doctor's letter, a prescription or transport.
"They're in transit from leaving the hospital to going home and there's a delay there and we've picked up that's an area we can focus on," said Health Waikato emergency department clinical nurse manager Jenni Yeates.
Only a handful of hospitals had transit lounges, she said.
Waikato's is staffed by a full clinical team with two beds, food facilities, reclining chairs, Sky TV and volunteer staff to cater to patients' needs to make discharges more seamless.
The lounge receives about a third of the hospital's discharge patients each day and most stay for between 40 minutes and five hours.
Ms Yeates said the lounge proved its worth last week when there were fears that the hospital running at near capacity would struggle to cope with an expected increase of patients
Rina Te Paea, a 62-year-old mother of 10, was in the lounge yesterday waiting for an ambulance to take her back to Taumarunui. She had been in hospital for partial kidney removal, her second visit in recent weeks.
She said being in the lounge, where her ward doctor was still able to visit her was "a lovely experience".
"It's better than sitting in your ward, that's for sure."
