Hospital staff dreading tide of drunk revellers

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Hospital emergency staff across the country are bracing for an influx of drunk patients as revellers over-indulge during the festive season.

A survey taken at more than 100 emergency departments (EDs) across New Zealand and Australia at 2am on a Saturday night earlier this month found one out of seven patients attended as a result of the harmful use of alcohol.

In some hot spots as many as half the patients were in the ED because of alcohol, the Australasian College for Emergency Medicine study found.

Lead researcher Dr Diana Egerton-Warburton, who is based in Australia, said staff were "sick and tired of dealing with aggressive and drunk patients in the ED".

"We had a drunk man knock a doctor unconscious because he wanted a sandwich," she said.

Hawkes Bay Hospital emergency physician Dr Scott Boyes said the one in seven figure seemed "a little bit light" in the lead-up to Christmas.

"We definitely see more alcohol-related problems around this time of year, whether it's the accidents, the fights, the falls, the suicides, the self-harm - it will get worse around this time of year.

"Overall, I think it's an unrecognised public health emergency."

A number of strategies had been looked at, but the key problem which remained was the country's drinking culture, Dr Boyes said.

"Really what we need to try and do is turn around that weekend bingeing ... that's actually going to take some time.

"In the meantime we're going to need some changes around the availability of alcohol, the density, the time, the access to alcohol."

Wellington Hospital emergency physician Dr Paul Quigley said after a decrease in alcohol-related admissions over winter, they began to pick up again heading into the festive season.

"Certainly over the Christmas and New Year period it's busiest and then after that it quietens down again.

"Some people [have suffered] genuine accidents just because they're drunk they're unco-ordinated and fallen and sprained their ankles, whereas some of them are alcohol-related violence and so on.

"The amount of violent harm we see is quite high."

Dr Quigley said a change to the price of alcohol could help stem the problem and they had already seen an impact from the reduction of breath-alcohol levels for motorists.

Another survey carried out by the college last month involving 2000 doctors and nurses from emergency departments in New Zealand and Australia found 92 per cent had experienced assaults or physical threats from drunk patients in the past 12 months.

"Staff keep getting hit," Dr Boyes said. "We had a patient the other day who took a photo of the staff member, saying 'I know where you live, we're going to get you' just because they got care that they didn't like."

Waikato Hospital emergency physician Dr Choon Boon said the survey did not reflect a typical Friday night and they would usually be dealing with more patients as a direct result of alcohol abuse.

The survey was conducted at 2am and the department typically got busier after bars closed.