'Health crisis': Healthcare workers flood Toni Street with messages about stretched system

Radio host Toni Street says exhausted workers are flooding her with messages about working double shifts and being over-stretched after she yesterday spoke on air about the nation's "health crisis".

Mum-of-three Street aired the segment on Coast radio after taking her three-year-old son Lachie to an Auckland accident and medical centre on Monday.

Lachie Street required six stitches for a gash above his eye, but the radio host was also shocked to learn how overworked her son's doctor was.

Doctor Peter Boot, medical director at NorthCare Accident and Medical, told Street he was working a 12-hour shift and that Lachie was his 58th of 62 patients that day.

"It was the biggest day I've done in my whole life," Boot, whose career has spanned more than 40 years, told Street.

Now - after airing yesterday's segment - Street said she had received "dozens and dozens of messages" from other stressed health workers.

"Anyone who doesn't think we're in a health crisis is delusional," she wrote in an Instagram post today.

Street also shared one of the messages she received from a person, saying they were an emergency department nurse.

"I've told my family and friends to please look after themselves cos (sic) they absolutely won't be able to get the care they deserve or even need if they need to go to hospital. And I work there, it's bloody scary," the nurse wrote.

She said while healthcare workers like her were doing their best, it wasn't enough to cope with the demand.

"I get called back after a shift to come back and do a double. Get asked to work on my days off, every single day."

She said it was "heartbreaking" for staff knowing they couldn't always step up to help on days off, but they were simply running "on an empty tank heading into the worst health winter in years".

Another Instagram user said she worked as an "ambo" and that her team was "underpaid", "understaffed", "burnt out" and going to Australia to get better pay.

Other workers posted similar messages, while members of the public were quick to praise healthcare workers - who, while being overworked, were still providing "amazing" care to those in need.

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A post shared by Toni Street (@tonimstreet)

It comes as hospitals across the country have been inundated with people fighting Covid and winter bugs. GPs were also seeing an overflow of patients diverted from overwhelmed Emergency Departments (ED) due to long wait times.

New data, released under the Official Information Act (OIA), revealed nearly 3000 patients waited longer than six hours to be treated at New Zealand's busiest ED last month.

The target is for 95 per cent of ED patients to be admitted, discharged or transferred within six hours.

Last week, the Herald reported a "healthy" 50-year-old women died with a brain bleed after allegedly being told by staff at Middlemore Hospital's ED there would be an eight-hour wait before she was examined, sparking an urgent review.

NorthCare Accident and Medical medical director Boot also told the Herald he is waking at 4am worried about his patients after working gruelling 12-hour shifts.

"I'm burnt out and I've already been in tears... the whole health system is falling to bits," he said.

Lately, Boot had started work at 7am and didn't leave the clinic until 7pm. On Monday, he saw 62 patients with many coming from ED where the wait times were unbearable.

To perform "safe proper medicine" a GP should be seeing about 20 patients a day, he said.

He said some people couldn't see their own GPs because doctors were tired and had "given up during Covid" or were frightened of dealing with respiratory illnesses.

"There isn't enough doctors and they are just overrun and don't have any more appointments," Boot said.

"I've had to cancel my last three lots of leave and I usually wake up about 4am thinking about my patients and the scary issues at the moment."

The OIA figures show Middlemore Hospital's ED managed only 68 per cent of patients within six hours last month, leaving 32 per cent (2791) waiting longer than the target treatment time.

Dr Peter Boot from Northcare Accident and Emergency is working 12-hour shifts to try and keep up with patient demand. Photo / Dean Purcell

Delays at the South Auckland ED had worsened dramatically since last winter when 79 per cent of patients were managed within six hours - still well below target.

However, Health Minister Andrew Little disputed the data, saying ED wait times fluctuated and it was impossible to establish a pattern from one month.

"One month data does not tell a picture about the system as a whole. Winter is a particularly bad time, they have bad months as suddenly a lot more people turn up. We have a huge surge at the moment," Little said.

The Ministry of Health would work with "problematic DHBs" to help ease patient overflow when concerning trends were identified, he said.

Little acknowledged that GPs were working "extraordinary hours" which wasn't sustainable.