Mōrena. This election campaign has struggled so far to focus on one issue or find a major policy conflict that resonates and ignites intense public debate. This week’s revelations that Auckland’s Starship Children’s Hospital has had to suspend cancer treatments for at least a week because of staffing shortages could be the story that does it.
There has been a drumbeat of news about Emergency Department (ED) over-crowding, blowouts in wait times, deaths in ED toilets, closures of rural clinics and an ongoing postcode lottery for treatments through the year. But sometimes a particular event or issue can blow up and dominate the headlines, especially in an election campaign. Often, it involves a case where a child is affected, and where public services for middle-class voters are suddenly in doubt.
This is that story.
Children screaming with pain as nurses run ragged
This morning Lane Nichols followed up his scoop from yesterday with reported comments from the parent of a child cancer patient in response to Health Minister Simeon Brown’s downplaying of the delays in facebook posts.
Lane reported Timaru dad Shaun Todd saying downplaying cancer treatment delays for sick children was a “cruel blow to desperate families for whom days, or even hours, can mean the difference for their survival,” and that he was furious to read Brown’s comments yesterday, which he said claimed flew in the face of reality.
“To see the minister’s post and to claim that’s not actually what’s happening angered me – upset the hell out of me.
“Frankly it’s just a load of s***. To see cancer kids being used as political footballs ... I’m equally p***** off with Labour.” Timaru dad Shaun Todd
Todd was quoted as saying his family saw first-hand the pressure that health staff were under and nursing vacancies not being filled “because there isn’t the money”.
“Families are already going through the most unimaginable situation. I know what those families are going through.
“You’re talking about days, you’re talking about hours sometimes, on what makes the difference in these kids’ chances to actually fight. And taking days away can be the difference between a kid surviving and a kid not.
“The fact that that is a political football is disgusting. I think the minister should be ashamed.
“Of course they haven’t been suspended because no doctor or nurse is going to walk away from that, but there have been delays. Face into that, own up, do better.” Shaun Todd
Brown yesterday denied any treatment suspensions or staffing freeze.
Gaslighting being called out by cancer patients’ parents
However, as Lane reports, Health New Zealand Te Whatu Ora confirmed that 20 cycles of chemotherapy were delayed over the last four months by up to seven days and two bone marrow transplants were delayed by “a short amount of time”.
Brown’s denials of staffing freezes are falling on deaf and increasingly angry ears, as Lane reports:
“Another Starship source told the Herald that understaffing was causing severe pressure in the oncology ward, which they claimed had resulted in several clinical errors relating to medicines this year.
The source described what they believed was an “effective sinking lid policy”.
“We’re not allowed to replace people,” they claimed. “We’re down to low numbers. And also, they’re only allowed to hire junior nurses, so if an experienced nurse leaves, you’re not allowed to get like for like.
“So over time there’s a depletion of clinical knowledge and experience. Those staff are under much more pressure, which can lead to errors.”
The NZ Nurses Organisations also described delays due to staffing shortages, and provided this chart showing staffing levels in the Oncology ward had been below target for 82% of the shifts worked in August.
Minister denies staffing issue. This chart says otherwise.
‘My son was screaming with pain. Nurses say they’re short-staffed.’
It’s not just Lane’s story. RNZ’s reporters have done fantastic work through this year covering the rolling catastrophe in the hospitals, especially through the ‘winter of discontent.’ That was reflected in this piece on Morning Report today, which reported the mother of a toddler whose cancer treatment was delayed due to staff shortages at Starship Hospital said her son was often screaming and writhing in pain while they tried to get help from a nurse. She said she was heartbroken and doubted the health minister’s assurances the jobs were being recruited for.
Tanya Lapu’aho’s two-and-a-half year old son Cillian was diagnosed in January with high-risk neuroblastoma, RNZ reported. He’s since had multiple stays at Starship for rounds of chemotherapy and two bone marrow transplants, and is moving on to radiation and immunotherapy. But her son’s second bone marrow transplant was delayed at least a week because there were not enough specialist nurses to carry out the treatment.
“On a day to day basis it looked like our son screaming and writhing in pain and us calling for our nurse and her wanting to come straight away but her not being able to because she had too many other things to do - you know duties to carry out, other patients to take care of - to the point where it was taking on average about 20 minutes, half an hour on a really busy day for a nurse to come to the room and respond to you pressing the nurse call button.
“And most of the time we were pressing that button for pain relief because our boy is in so much pain from the cancer, from the chemo, from everything.” Tanya Lapu’aho
RNZ reported Lapu’aho’s son had to wait for chemotherapy lines to be changed and medication to be administered, and said available nurses would apologise because they were not yet qualified for those tasks. Once her son’s pain medication ran out completely and there was no nurse available to top it up again, she said.
“He’s screaming, we can’t put him down, he’s writhing you know, like he’s only two years old, the cancer feels like fire inside his bones, it’s so unfair that that guilt and responsibility gets put on the nurses, you know they keep apologising ‘I’m so sorry, we’re just so short staffed’ and we know it’s not their problem and we feel horrible that they even feel that it is.”
She said it was obvious that there were not enough nurses to do the work.
“When you take a step out of your hospital room and look at the ward there’s just not that many nurses and the ones that are there, they’re running around working as hard as they can and it just feels like a hopeless and helpless situation really.” Tanya Lapu’aho
Voters say health system concerns are high and rising
Polling firms Ipsos and Perceptive have found voter concerns about the health system have been high and rising for the last year.
See more on that and the other key news in Picks n’ Mixes and more below.
(I have opened this one up to all immediately because it’s topical. Thanks in advance to our paying subscribers who enable me to do this sort of work. Join us as a subscriber if you’d like to see more of this sort of work. Here’s a 50% off introductory offer for new subscribers for the first year.)
Top Six News items of the Day
* Auckland’s Starship Childrens’ Hospital won’t be back at full staffing levels for another three months, RNZ reports after it suspended cancer treatments for a week yesterday because of staff shortages. (See more in Front Page of the day below)
* The Greens have pledged to reverse National’s $2.4 billion worth of public service staffing cuts.
* PM Christopher Luxon has walked back his pledge in Tuesday’s leaders debate to raise the minimum wage by the same rate as the inflation rate, Henry Cooke reports for The Post-$.
* More than 60% of insurance brokers say they are struggling to find natural hazard insurance for owners, with insurers reaching their risk limits, Rob Stock reports for The Post-$.
* NZ First MP and former Wellington Mayor Andy Foster has claimed $36,400 in accommodation allowance for his Wellington housing costs as an ‘out of town’ MP, despite owning a house in the capital and standing as a candidate in the Upper Hutt seat of Remutaka, Joel MacManus reports for The Spinoff.
* Ukraine has abandoned its truce with Russia and President Volodymyr Zelenskyysays he feels betrayed by US President Donald Trump, who has blocked Ukrainian forces from using Starlink.
Top Six Scoops & Breaking News items of the Day
* Jenee Tibshraeny for NZ Herald-$: Kicked into touch: Govt defers responding to insurance affordability review
* Nelson Mail-$: More jobs on the line at government science institute ‘The government’s Bioeconomy Science Institute is proposing cutting nearly 100 jobs, according to the Public Service Association.’
* Kate Newton for RNZ: Government quietly selects liquefied natural gas provider ; Mandy Te for Interest: Government shortlists LNG import terminal provider, MBIE says
* Investigation by Jake Kenny for Stuff: Auckland City was wrongly labelled NZ’s homicide capital.
* Investigation by Matt Nippert for NZ Herald-$: The talented Mr Pittman: From Auckland Grammar to New Zealand’s biggest fraudster NZ Herald Video: From Auckland Grammar schoolboy to NZ’s biggest fraudster?
* Jaime Cunningham for NewstalkZB: Learning support waitlists: 4551 children waiting for specialist help
Top Six Features, Deep-dives & Comment of the Day
* Interview with Winston Peters by Toby Manhire for The Spinoff: Winston Peters still wants to be the prime minister
* Interview with Mark Todd for RNZ: Developer wants political parties to butt out of carparking rules
* Deep-dive by Bill Hickman for RNZ: Wellington nightlife is struggling, spending in bars has halved Statistics released this month by analytics company Dot Loves Data showed a nearly 50% fall in spending in Wellington bars since 2022.
* Electorate profile by Te Aniwa Hurihanganui for 1News: Waiariki: Whānau grapple with suicide – ‘We all have the same broken heart’
* The Post-$: Editorial: You can’t cut your way to innovation
* Column by Simon Bridges for NZ Herald-$: Tell me who in the Western World is less ambitious at raising capital than NZ?
Cartoon of the Day: Drawing blanks
Cheers
Bernard
PS: See the full Picks n’ Mixes & In the Papers for today here online only for paying subscribers. It was published earlier today.
