Hospital urges patients to stay away unless really ill

Patients are being told to stay away from Tauranga Hospital's emergency department unless they are seriously unwell as it struggles to cope with an overflow of patients.

Hospital management deny there is a crisis in the department but say they are seeing an average of eight extra patients a night and this was causing intense pressure.

Hospital staff said a severe shortage of beds meant emergency patients were waiting up to three hours before being placed in a ward and junior doctors were being left to staff the accident and emergency department alone.

To ease the pressure, the department is discouraging people from turning up at the accident and emergency department unless they are certain they need immediate help.

It is also keeping patients on stretchers in the department instead of moving them to a bed and is calling in off-duty staff at short notice at night during surges in patient numbers.

A senior doctor, who would not be named, said delays in the department meant patients' conditions deteriorated while they waited to be seen.

New Zealand Nurses Organisation Tauranga Hospital organiser Lesley Harry said nurses told her there was constant pressure in the emergency unit. At least three times a week there would be no beds to accommodate patients.

The director of emergency medicine, Derek Sage, said there was a large increase in incoming patients over the past few years but he was "comfortable" the hospital was dealing with the issue.

Dr Sage said the booming Western Bay population was the cause of stretched hospital resources and increased patient numbers but said it had not reached a "crisis point".

He described the situation as a "logjam" or "congestion".

The hospital is running an advertising campaign in community newspapers, on radio and in movie theatres encouraging people to visit their GP if they think their situation is not serious.

Dr Sage said the pressure on the emergency unit would ease after the hospital redevelopment was finished in 2008.

- NZPA