Open mike 10/09/2024

Written By: - Date published: 6:00 am, September 10th, 2024 - 49 comments
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49 comments on “Open mike 10/09/2024 ”

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  1. BK 1
    10 September 2024 at 6:18 am

    Blimey, who could of seen this coming

    Patient dies in ED waiting room at Rotorua Hospital https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/national/527510/patient-dies-in-ed-waiting-room-at-rotorua-hospital

    • gsays 1.1
      10 September 2024 at 7:34 am

      It is important to remember lack of money is not the issue. It is a lack of will to invest in staff and improve wages. After all of landlords aren't complaining about their plight.

      We could have been nurse training locals, with a $200 a week grant. All fees forgiven if they are in the workforce after three years.

      But neo liberalism has our political masters worshipping at the altar of the balance sheet.

      • tc 1.1.1
        10 September 2024 at 9:10 am

        Totally this is about choice and they've chosen to manufacture a crises in health on top of entrenching the impacts of tobacco.

        Keep them reeling appears the MO with voluntary redundancies being requested when insufficient resources are a current issue.

        Theyre going for broke, literally.

  2. Ngungukai 2
    10 September 2024 at 7:05 am

    I was involved in a serious car accident about a month ago, arrived at the hospital (Accident and Emergency) at 5.30pm by ambulance, accident occurred at 3.30pm, finally got a glass of orange juice with the breakfast at 9.00am the following morning. I was not even given a glass of water between 5.30pm and 9.00am, until the following morning. They were going to put me on fluids overnight however nothing happened, they were either too busy or communications were poor. I was a bit dazed from the accident so did not push the issue however not very professional IMHO. Got asked a million questions by numerous nurses and physicians but no follow through ???

    • Kay 2.1
      10 September 2024 at 8:39 am

      It's been a mess for years. About 15 years ago I came down with what turned out to be appendicitis. In the waiting room for 2 hours before I practically collapsed on them, then trapped in ED for 22 hours because the hospital was on code red and didn't have a single bed anywhere. There were 16 patients also stuck there for lack of beds. For the duration, I was parked away very out of sight in a closet of a treatment room, because that's all there was.

      I've ended up in ED a lot due to my chronic condition in the intervening years and spent plenty of time stuck on a trolley in the corridor. I'm absolutely terrified of needing EDs help again.

      The code red/black which leaves hospitals completely gridlocked could be alleviated a lot by fixing the bed-blocking problem of people well enough to be discharged, but nowhere to go, so they have to keep them. Mostly the elderly. Better investment in age care (and not just for the rich) would be very cost-effective for the hospital system, and of great benefit to the general public.

      • mpledger 2.1.1
        10 September 2024 at 9:39 am

        It's like they need a convalescent ward, where people who aren't well enough to go home but are too well for hospital level care can go and be strengthened up.

        • Shanreagh 2.1.1.1
          10 September 2024 at 11:04 am

          In the olden days they used to have convalescent wards/homes associated with the hospitals. I went to one as a teenager after struggling with recovery after abdominal surgery.

          But now you see it is much cheaper and therefore efficient (sarcasm) to skip the formal convalescence and send patients who would/should have been able to go to a convalescent ward/home back to their family. It is also much more 'efficient' to send patients home late on a Friday night when out of town family has had no notice and no chance to organise support.

          Of course fiddling around with bed numbers is the stuff of modern hospitals. They shouldn't have to do it any more than schools should have rely on parental and community support eg cake stalls/sausage sizzles for the basics.

          Health has been underfunded since forever – I worked there and I have written about this before.

        • Kay 2.1.1.2
          10 September 2024 at 11:20 am

          Convalescent- that's the word I was trying to remember! I can remember when Kenepuru hospital had one of those, so more people could be discharged from Wellington Hospital. Bring back the Hospital Boards with the people who were able to be sensible about things.

      • Hunter Thompson II 2.1.2
        10 September 2024 at 9:50 am

        Glad you got through that experience and came out OK, but it should not have happened like that – and it was 15 years ago.

        The sad story continues. Stuff news report (10 Sept) says a patient waiting in Rotorua ED died before being seen.

      • kejo 2.1.3
        10 September 2024 at 3:13 pm

        George Monbiot in his recent book " The Invisible Doctrine." talking about the neoliberal approach to the NHS in the UK. "But funding cuts alone are a slow way to kill a service. You need accelerants and the most effective of themis the disempowerment frustration and elimination of the staff providing the service. Across the NHS doctors and nurses are leaving in droves as the pay is so poor. conditions so dangerous and the stress intolerable." Sound familiar? Different government. Same disaster capitalism.

    • mpledger 2.2
      10 September 2024 at 9:28 am

      Maybe they were deciding if you needed an operation and you were "nil by mouth" until that decision was made.

    • Belladonna 2.3
      10 September 2024 at 11:24 am

      My experience with ED – and general hospital care, for that matter (for a range of different family members, with different degrees of emergency), is that you need to have a very persistent and effective patient advocate with you. I've been that person on many occasions. Remaining pleasant and polite (it's not the fault of the overworked staff), but also persistent in reminding them of outstanding issues, and missing communications.

    • Ngungukai 2.4
      10 September 2024 at 12:22 pm

      Cleared by Doctors to be discharged at 9.30am Tuesday morning waited in Out Patients until 5.30pm until I got the fking paperwork, what a pack of useless cts IMHO. Obviously some serious under staffing issues, or poor systems or both. Great for the wealthy who can afford private health care with their huge Tax Cuts. Baldrick, Reti and the Sud African Levy need a good boot up the a**s.

      • Kay 2.4.1
        10 September 2024 at 2:37 pm

        While I fully appreciate that having the paperwork immediately can be necessary for some, depending on the scenario, it's way better for your mental (if not physical) health just to leave, and deal with the paperwork later.

        • Drowsy M. Kram 2.4.1.1
          10 September 2024 at 3:45 pm

          That's a practical response to a less-than-ideal situation. Last month Dad was discharged from P.N. hospital after a 2-day stay for a dislocated shoulder – the care he received in the ED / operating theatre / Ortho ward was excellent.

          The Ortho ward staff were flat out (it was midday on a Saturday), and gave him the option of waiting, or receiving the paperwork by post. A letter duly arrived six days later – might have been sooner but for the three-deliveries-a-week NZ Post service.

          Three-days-a-week public hospitals anyone?

  3. ianmac 3
    10 September 2024 at 8:59 am

    Does this comment mean that the approval rating is not better than labour's rating in 2023? If true then this COC Government has not inspired us.

    • New Zealanders’ overall mean rating of the new Coalition Government’s performance has declined slightly to 4.5 – on par with the Labour-led government rating in the Ipsos Issues Monitor August 2023 wave, prior to the general election in October 2023.

    https://www.ipsos.com/en-nz/ipsos-nz-issues-monitor-august-2024?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email

  4. Mike the Lefty 4
    10 September 2024 at 9:24 am

    Successive governments have been obsessed with "changing health systems".

    Change the system – it will bring better outcomes for all of us – we are told.

    Billions get spent on changing the system, but changing the system is largely a reshuffling of responsibilities in upper management. We had DHBs, then we didn't. One government even tried making patients pay to come in for treatment. All the reorganisation in the world has done little and cost lots.

    It doesn't bring us what is really needed – more doctors, nurses, other health professionals, hospitals, clinics, equipment, etc and (despite what the CoC says) good administration people.

    There is not enough support for young people to enter the medical profession. If a village in India can gather the hundreds of thousands of rupees to pay to train a man or woman to become a doctor who might one day work in NZ then why the f.. can't we do this in New Zealand for one of our own? We have the people, but obviously can't be bothered with the job of finding them and training them.

    It is much easier just to look overseas for the ready-made people. Trouble is every other western country is doing the same so it becomes a kind of auction where the highest bidder wins, and that is not often New Zealand.

    The NZ public health system, once said to be the envy of the western world (although that is arguable) has been let down by governments that have regarded it as a business, rather than a service. And poor planning! God knows, we were told two or more decades ago that with population dynamics – largely ageing and immigration – our health service needed to come up with plans how to cope with the changes but that hasn't happened.

    Our population stands at over 5 million now, our health system is funded and staffed as if it were still 2-3 million. No wonder the cracks are becoming obvious. Things will not improve under the CoC, despite the political spin that comes from them daily. It increasingly seems that the CoC regard health spending as "wasteful spending" and perhaps it is better spent building billion dollar highways and by-passes.

    One of the fundamental things we need to do with our public health services is stop running it like a business.

  5. koina 5
    10 September 2024 at 9:59 am

    To be fair every country in the world has the same problems.

    Some of course a great deal worse.

    NZ is ranked around 25th best in the world.

    Guatemala is ranked 104 th.

    But remember this is not Guatemala DR Ropata.

    Not yet anyway

    • bwaghorn 5.1
      10 September 2024 at 11:29 am

      But remember this is not Guatemala DR Ropata.

      shane jones is working on it though, added and abetted by a penny pincher with out a soul.

  6. Reality 6
    10 September 2024 at 10:27 am

    Winston Peters went over the Minister of Finance's head to negotiate (demand) with Luxon that MFAT (his baby) would have only very minor cuts to staff compared with 6% cuts that other departments had to implement. Tail wagging the dog again. So unfair, wrong and shifty.

  7. Ngungukai 7
    10 September 2024 at 12:28 pm

    NZ Health System is stuffed in my IMHO, I thought it wasn’t bad 20 years ago when I had Cancer Treatment however successive Government both National and Labour have been running it into the Ground. TAX CUTS got this NACTACTNZF Government elected however what about health and education for us people in the Lower Socio Economic Groups????

  8. Adrian 8
    10 September 2024 at 12:29 pm

    There is an insidious form of privatisation happening in GP clinics. American interests are buying up clinics in N Z. The first thing they do is extract a “ management fee” which is non- taxed here and bank it in a tax haven, thus guaranteeing the clinic runs up a huge tax loss in subsequent years. This is the model that rest homes use and Winston railed about a few years ago but he has gone suspiciously quiet, maybe they found some loose change as a political donation. A few years ago an accountant acquaintance who had a few too many told me that a certain spectacles seller had a similar scheme whereby 38% of every dollar that went thru the door was repatriated to the Channel Islands, no wonder your prices can so low.

    If I had any energy left I’d try to get into Parliament and stick it to these thieving bastards. This has to stop.

    • Descendant Of Smith 8.1
      10 September 2024 at 3:33 pm

      Happening in dental as well. Plus the dentists being pressured to meet targets for more profitable things.

      Meanwhile the doctors and dentists get paid less.

  9. Jenny 9
    10 September 2024 at 12:35 pm

    '

    Israel, Hamas' Biggest Recruiter

    From Democracy Now!

    @28:33 minutes:

    …these youth essentially would tell you, "the reason we took up arms is because we can't keep living like this".

    You know again a lot of them had served time inside Israeli prisons, being subject to torture and ill treatment. The combatants I have spoken with would tell me, 'I would rather be killed than go back to that torture chamber'.
    And it's really significant, that not just had they been in Israeli prisons, prior to choosing to take up arms, but they were taken to prison as minors.
    So the Israeli regime essentially designed in [resistance].
    Resistance is inevitable because truly you can see how they reach a point where it's enough, it's truly enough.

    And they will try any means possible to try and gain their Liberation and their freedom. And the recognition [is] that they are protecting not just themselves, but to the best of their capacity, their community, against these Israeli incursions. [Which] as we have seen, are always lethal and target civilian infrastructure…

    (AI generated transcript lightly edited to aid comprehension.)

    • Subliminal 9.1
      10 September 2024 at 4:40 pm

      Yes. Israel have always tortured their Palestinian prisoners. This includes rape. It is a well established fact that during the time of torture, the victim wishes that they were dead and given that many do indeed end up tortured and dead, it is quite obvious that many would choose to preempt the situation by being armed before the next contact with any Israeli defense or police or settlers. Armed Resistence increases your chance of avoiding more torture since if things go wrong, death is more likely than capture.

  10. tWig 10
    10 September 2024 at 2:01 pm

    Vanuatu, Fiji and Samoa want international criminal court to class environmental destruction as crime alongside genocide.

    Good thinking.

    "…have proposed a formal recognition by the court of the crime of ecocide, defined as “unlawful or wanton acts committed with knowledge that there is a substantial likelihood of severe and either widespread or long-term damage to the environment being caused by those acts”.

    “No countries have been willing to publicly say they oppose the adoption of ecocide as a crime, she said, but she expected resistance and heavy lobbying from high-polluting businesses, including oil companies whose executives could eventually be held liable if the offence were to be adopted.”

  11. satty 11
    10 September 2024 at 3:02 pm

    Looks like some people very slowly realise how big a transformation is required to meet our climate targets:

    NZ Herald – Auckland councillor calls for rethink on plan to halve car use and increase cycling 13-fold by 2030

    Obviously, as long as Ford Ranger and Toyota Hilux are top-selling cars in NZ we won't achieve any of those reduction targets. So the short-term solution is to abandon any targets (see also the National Polluter Partner, ACT and NZ First in the Coalition of Destruction / Corruption) and hoping for a technical miracle in the meantime.

    There will be some panic coming up between 2030 and 2050, when annual global temperature increase reaches the 2 degree mark already (maybe not permanently, but more and more frequently) and we have to reduce pollution not gradually but near instantly, like culling all cows at once and permanently mothball all those Ford Rangers and Toyota Hiluxes.