issue becomes bigger than just numbers on the roster.<\/a><\/p>\n\u201cI think with the sustained pressures that they\u2019re all under, the culture in the workplace is now like a cancer. People are becoming exhausted, desensitised.\u201d<\/p>\n
The new ward has a different layout and nurses\u2019 desks are scattered throughout.<\/p>\n
Ricky Gray said because of such changes, the move into the unit should have happened gradually to ease stress.<\/p>\n
Erica Hume\u2019s mother, Carey, agreed, likening the transition to moving house.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf you put that into a mental health-ward context, you\u2019ve got staff unfamiliar even though they\u2019ve had training in there, new patients coming in who don\u2019t know what\u2019s going on or how things work,\u201d Carey Hume said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey\u2019re stressed because of that. They\u2019re stressed and in there because they aren\u2019t well and they need some help to get back to being in full health.\u201d<\/p>\n
Raw figures didn\u2019t always include the context behind incidents, she said.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe find the staff are encouraged to report every minor [incident], but they don\u2019t report the circumstances that led to an event.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s quite often quite telling because that\u2019s the patient\u2019s perspective of it as well.\u201d<\/p>\n
Carey Hume was concerned about short staffing.<\/p>\n
\u201cOur feedback that we gave them was that we stressed the hospital design, the ward layout and operating model, was heavily reliant on staff presence.<\/p>\n
\u201cTherefore, it was vital all shifts were fully staffed.\u201d<\/p>\n
Health NZ interim group director of operations MidCentral Katherine Fraser-Chapple said there had been a slight increase in instances of aggression towards staff for a range of reasons, including highly unwell patients and adjustments to the new environment.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhile the recent spike has understandably heightened concern, overall incident patterns remain within the range we typically see across a 12-month period.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have strongly encouraged staff to report all incidents, including lower-level behaviours such as verbal abuse, to ensure we have a complete picture of risk.\u201d<\/p>\n
Since February, 14 staff had suffered injuries requiring time off work. Of those, 10 had returned.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe incidents recorded since February vary widely, from verbal threats and verbal abuse through to physical contact, pushing, and more serious assaults such as punching.\u201d<\/p>\n
Health NZ had a violence and aggression steering group overseeing \u201csystem-wide improvements\u201d, while the new ward had a violence minimisation working group, led by the charge nurse.<\/p>\n
Health NZ said its figures about assaults referred to the new ward only, and didn\u2019t include the geriatric ward.<\/p>\n
Recruitment remained a focus, Fraser-Chapple said, but Health NZ didn\u2019t say how many vacancies there were.<\/p>\n
On Friday, New Zealand Nurses Organisation publication Kaitiaki reported the new ward had vacancies for 20 fulltime equivalent workers.<\/p>\n
Nurses Organisation delegate and Wellington-based mental health nurse Grant Brookes said the rise in assaults could relate to staffing levels.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe new unit is more than twice the floor space of the old unit and staffing numbers haven\u2019t been increased.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is one possible factor for the spike in assaults with the opening of the new unit.\u201d<\/p>\n
It had a flow-on effect.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf a whaiora [patient] becomes distressed in one part of the building, it takes a lot longer for staff to respond to that.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt also means they won\u2019t necessarily have multiple staff responding when it\u2019s needed. Distress can quickly escalate in this new, bigger space in a way that it didn\u2019t in the smaller one.\u201d<\/p>\n
Assaults on healthcare workers were increasing across the country, particularly in mental health wards and emergency departments, Brookes said.<\/p>\n
– RNZ<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Ricky Gray, whose brother, Shaun, died by suicide in 2014, has used the Official Information Act to uncover…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1021498,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[4317],"tags":[34744,3590,226818,60696,92106,13022,105,256,47634,32505,218,14233,3577,282551,2846,16,15,282552,26298],"class_list":["post-1021497","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mental-health","tag-assault","tag-day","tag-ellingham","tag-every","tag-exhausted","tag-facing","tag-health","tag-in","tag-jimmy","tag-mental","tag-mental-health","tag-north","tag-of","tag-palmerston","tag-risk","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-ward","tag-workers"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/116736126643392679","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1021497","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1021497"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1021497\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1021498"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1021497"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1021497"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1021497"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}