Hospital Bd refuses to accept patient

Press, 28 January 1986, Page 25

Hospital Bd refuses to accept patient

Staff at Christchurch Women’s Hospital’s neonatal unit are upset at a decision not to accept a patient from Auckland. On Friday, staff at Auckland’s National Women’s Hospital asked Christchurch staff if they could take the patient. A specialist in neo-natal care in Christchurch, Dr Brian Darlow, said yesterday that although the unit was facing one of its worst nursing shortages, the staff felt they could cope with an extra patient.

The patient was a woman in her twentyninth week of pregnancy whose baby had to be delivered as soon as a hospital was found which could take her.

Auckland, Hamilton and Wellington hospitals’ neonatal units were full, and National Women’s Hospital staff asked Christchurch Women’s Hospital to take her. Dr Darlow said that although the Christchurch staff had said they could cope with the patient, hospital administrators had overruled their decision and refused to take her.

The woman eventually had her baby at New Plymouth’s Taranaki Base Hospital. Dr Darlow said that only one of the six ventilators were being used at the time, and the staff felt they had an obligation to use the idle equipment. However, the medical

superintendent-in-chief of the Canterbury Hospital Board, Dr Ross Fairgray, said yesterday that there were not enough nurses in the unit to cope with the extra patient.

“On the recommendation of the nursing staff with the approval of the acting chairman of pediatric services, we had to turn down the request from Auckland,” he said. Dr Fairgray said it was regrettable that the equipment in the neo-natal unit could not be used, but there was simply not enough staff to run it. In the past, when there was equipment, space and staff available, the hospital had often taken patients from the North Island.

"It is nd good sending to us a mother, and a baby who needs neo-natal care, when we have the equipment but no staff,” he said.

If a patient was accepted from another hospital, the hospital was committed to giving better care than that available at the first hospital. It was no good accepting a mother from Auckland unless Christchurch staff could do a better job than Auckland could, said Dr Fairgray.

Auckland’s National Women’s Hospital neonatal unit was full at the week-end. There were 12 babies, with nine on ventilators. Staff were under extreme pressure, he said.