One in four ED patients are affected by alcohol, a survey shows. Photo / 123RF
One in four ED patients are affected by alcohol, a survey shows. Photo / 123RF
A 70-year-old man crashed his car while driving five times over the legal alcohol limit and started yelling and fighting off medical staff trying to help him.
He was among the one in four people needing treatment at the country's emergency departments last Saturday after alcohol-related incidents, according to a new snapshot taken of the departments at 2am.
The patients either had alcohol-related injuries, a medical condition as a result of using alcohol, mental health issues due to alcohol or were injured by someone who was drunk. In the majority of cases they were just too drunk.
The Herald spoke to some of the country's leading ED doctors who said it wasn't uncommon to be vomited on, spat at, verbally abused, threatened and even assaulted by drunk patients.
They relayed examples of recent drunk patients, which included:
• Last weekend staff had to restrain a 70-year-old man, who was allegedly five times over the legal alcohol limit, and had allegedly driven drunk through the Waikato before crashing and being taken to hospital by police.
• A 14-year-old girl was treated by staff at Hawke's Bay Hospital after she was found lying semi-comatose in a garden from drinking too many RTDs.
• A group of teenage boys went drinking in Auckland central. One decided to drive home at 2am and crashed, injuring passengers.
The survey, by the Australasian College for Emergency Medicine, found twice as many people were turning up in New Zealand emergency departments as a result of alcohol than in Australia. Last year's New Zealand figures showed one in seven people being treated were at ED because of alcohol.
The figures sparked urgent calls from leading ED doctors for New Zealand's drinking culture to change because they are sick of dealing with drunks.
Waikato Hospital Emergency Department clinical director Dr John Bonning said a quarter of patients going through ED because of alcohol was "absolutely diabolical".
"They are resource intensive, and completely sober health professionals at emergency departments are just over dealing with drunk people. It's just not fun when you are looking after these obnoxious drunk people who often have slightly obnoxious drunk hangers on as well.
"They put an undue strain on our emergency departments and can be rude, aggressive or - in the worst circumstances - even violent towards doctors and nurses."
Waikato Hospital emergency department clinical director Dr John Bonning says medical staff are over dealing with drunks. Photo / File
Bonning had been kicked in the face while trying to help a drunk patient.
It was a regular occurrence to treat patients who were semi-comatose because they were drunk. Often they couldn't speak and were lying in pools of their own vomit, he said.
"They are at risk of choking on vomit. They can't control themselves, they can't stand up, they have been in the gutter lying on the streets."
Often staff would make the person clean up the sick, but most of the time they were too drunk to do it.
Hawke's Bay DHB emergency medicine consultant Dr Scott Boyes said that along with more youths getting drunk on RTDs and cheap spirits, there was also an increasing amount of alcohol-related suicide attempts.
"It's really distressing for the front-line staff who really bear the brunt of that ... it's really an overstretched emergency system that has come under an immense amount of pressure from alcohol-related presentation at this time of year."
He said medical staff often felt they were in a war zone.
"It's not uncommon to be spat at, verbally abused, threatened, pushed, wrestling people. It's not uncommon for that sort of thing and it's very difficult for the staff to cope both physically and emotionally with this type of problem."
Auckland Hospital Emergency Department clinical director Dr Anil Nair said the number of patients being treated for alcohol was at its highest during the New Year period.
His staff were treating people involved in drunken fights in the CBD almost every weekend and too often they were having to make calls to parents of teenagers who had been drinking in town from 10pm and then decided to drive home.
"We get big car crashes around 2am when people haven't been wearing their seatbelts and smashed into a power pole and end up in ED with significant head injuries and lots of other major injuries and it is hard when you have to try and contact their family members in the middle of the night and tell them their son is in hospital with life threatening injuries from which he may never recover."
The emergency doctors said more needed to be done at a legislative level. They wanted the closing time of bars changed from 3 and 4am to midnight which had resulted in a 20 per cent reduction in presentations to local emergency departments in New South Wales.
Australian National University Medical School professor Drew Richards said the latest figures were further proof New Zealand needed to look at its drinking culture.
