KEY POINTS:
Patients recovering from major surgery are being forced to sleep in the corridors of North Shore Hospital because there are no empty beds.
Elderly patients have to use bed pans in the hallway, while others sleep on medical trolleys and share pillows in the emergency department corridors in conditions described by furious visitors as "like a Third World country".
The Waitemata District Health Board has admitted that the situation is "unpleasant", but staffing shortages means little can be done to fix the problem.
A harsh winter and an ageing population has filled the in-patient wards to capacity, so patients without a bed have been shifted to the passageway of the emer-gency department.
A 47-year-old woman who suffered complications from a hysterectomy lay in the corridor of the emergency ward for 18 hours overnight. The woman was rushed to hospital with a post-operative infection and a racing heartbeat. Her condition stabilised after five hours, but all 25 beds in the emergency ward were taken.
She was forced to sleep in the hallway with 16 other patients until her specialist doctor discharged her to recuperate at home.
Most of the waiting patients were lying on trolleys, some had to use a bedpan in the hallway shielded only by a screen, and private medical details became public knowledge. To use the bathroom, patients queued to borrow poles from each other to carry intravenous drip lines, and one was lying on a trolley without a pillow.
"When I left, the nurses said 'Great, we can take your pillow now'," the woman told the Herald on Sunday. "I felt I was one of the lucky ones because one gentleman had been there for four days.
"It was unbelievable. You don't expect this sort of thing from New Zealand. I've never been in a hospital before, but this was totally unacceptable." The woman sympathised with staff who were struggling to cope, but without a buzzer to alert nurses to a problem, patients were advised to shout to get their attention.
Her husband described the situation as "Third World".
"Elderly people are having to put screens around them so they can use a bed pan. It's just wrong.
"You hear everything. Nothing is private. I can tell you all about the girl visiting her brother because he slashed his wrists."
Rachel Haggerty, general manager of adult health services at Waitemata District Health Board, admitted that the situation was less than perfect but rejected claims that patients were there for more than 24 hours.
Staffing shortages meant that the hospital struggled to cope with a harsh winter, with acute admissions increasing by 11 per cent.
"It's very unpleasant for patients, but the corridor is safe because it's the best place for us to keep an eye on them," Haggerty said.
