Te Whatu Ora Southern: Southland Hospital Update
Te Whatu Ora Southern would like to provide some information regarding recent media coverage about Southland Hospital
Te Whatu Ora Southern Interim District Director Hamish Brown says, “We want to assure our community that Te Whatu Ora Southern is working very hard to ensure patient safety and staff wellbeing. We acknowledge pressure on the healthcare system, and we have processes in place to ensure we continue to provide appropriate and timely health care to our community.”
“We know that some patients are facing delays in their health care, and that this is distressing for them. We are constantly reviewing priorities and focusing our resources to best meet the health care needs of our community while balancing staff illness and vacancies.”
Paediatric Assessment Unit at Southland Hospital
The Paediatric Assessment Unit (PAU) is usually open from 10am – 10pm, Monday – Friday. The unit has been closed on and off for three weeks due to Resident Medical Officer (RMO) staff shortages. We are likely to fully re-open in late October. Children who would normally be assessed in PAU are being assessed in the ward or the Emergency Department. The Paediatric team will go to where the child is.
If you have a question about your child and the PAU, please contact your treating team at Southland Hospital (03 218 1949).
Patient transfers
In early October, a small number of patients from Lakes District Hospital and Gore Hospital who would normally be transferred to Southland Hospital, were transferred directly to Dunedin Hospital. These patients continued to receive appropriate and safe health care.
Most patients received orthopaedic assessment and surgery as usual within hours at Southland Hospital. The exception was the transfer of two patients out of hours to Dunedin in early October by helicopter for urgent orthopaedic care.
Oncology
Urgent and acute oncology services continue in Southern. Our oncology waiting times for First Specialist Appointment (FSA) remain under pressure as we balance staff capacity with a high demand for care. We know waiting for an FSA and a treatment plan is stressful enough and delays can make this even more distressing for patients. Our staff are working very hard to ensure patients are seen quickly and we appreciate that any wait is upsetting for patients.
Most urgent patients are seen within guideline time frames. To assist with ensuring minimal wait lists, we are outsourcing some care to private facilities, and utilising locums. We are also actively recruiting for staff vacancies.
If you have a question your oncology service, please contact your treating team.
Staff wellbeing
Te Whatu Ora Southern is working hard with our staff to balance meeting the health care needs of our patients, always ensuring patient safety, and looking after our staff and their wellbeing.
We are deferring some planned care outpatient clinics and theatre cases, utilising locums where able to support our clinical staff (including on call shifts) and co-ordinating locations of acute care across the district.
The wellbeing of our staff is a very high priority at Te Whatu Ora Southern. We greatly appreciate our staff’s dedication, commitment, and support to our community.
It’s important to note that our staff have also been disrupted by COVID-19 and other respiratory illnesses like other New Zealanders, and this has played a part in staff absence and leave. We are actively recruiting to fill vacant positions.
Training and recruitment
Improving Aotearoa’s health workforce capacity is a key focus of Te Whatu Ora, including for our Southern region.
In August, the Government announced a suite of targeted measures to train more health workers domestically and bring more nurses and doctors into the country to help address immediate workforce pressures. There are also other initiatives under way nationally to recruit overseas trained health professionals while making it easier than ever for nurses to move to New Zealand to work.
There is a worldwide shortage of health professionals and New Zealand is no exception. In the same way that we aim to recruit those who want to move to New Zealand, it’s not unusual for other nations to try to recruit from our workforce – particularly given the high regard that our health professionals are held in across the globe.
New Zealand is operating in a competitive environment internationally for health professionals, and the government is implementing a wide range of initiatives to address immediate workforce pressures as well as working on longer-term measures to ensure a sustainable health workforce. We are strongly committed to retaining, developing, and growing our local workforce, and to augmenting it by actively recruiting from overseas.
More than 1,000 healthcare workers have applied to work in New Zealand under new immigration settings that came into effect in July.