Orthopaedic surgeon Dr Perry Turner always thought he would retire at Nelson Hospital but he’s recently quit as the overwhelming workload became too much.
He’s now doing only private practice. He said he didn’t want to leave, but he felt like he had to. “I’m 52. I honestly feel like I’m the best surgeon I’ve ever been and I’m leaving the public hospital for my own health.”
Turner said the number of patients had climbed while the number of doctors hadn’t. Senior doctors like him covered both planned procedures and emergencies, but he said it wasn’t working.
“I was the sole spine surgeon in this whole region so what I saw personally was, every week, I’d cancel my entire day of operating to do trauma.”
Turner said 90% of his planned spinal surgeries were being cancelled, mainly because he was being called into emergencies.
“Just before I resigned, there was patient who had organised for her family to fly here for her and [her surgery] was cancelled, I understand, for the sixth time.” He said one patient had their procedure cancelled nine times.
1News was contacted by a Nelson woman who has been waiting two years and three months for an operation on her hand and she currently couldn’t hold anything. She was told in early January she was top of Turner’s list but the surgery was cancelled two weeks later. With Turner’s resignation, it was not clear when she would be operated on.
Turner said there were six senior orthopaedic doctors at Nelson Hospital but another colleague also resigned around the same time, leaving four.
He was the eighth senior doctor from Nelson Hospital to speak to 1News since it began investigating the situation at the hospital.
“What can we do when we’re doing everything we can and it’s not enough?” Turner said.
“I did a weekend call last year where I was up two nights… and, on Monday morning, I turned up to a clinic that should have 18 people booked and it had 34 booked and no registrar. So it was just me”.
He hadn’t slept that weekend. “In that particular clinic, I had one guy yelling at me and that… that’s honestly the day I decided I couldn’t do this any more.”
Turner said a lack of resident doctors, or junior doctors, put more pressure on the senior staff.
Deborah Powell of the Resident Doctors’ Association said the situation was only going to get worse. “We’ve got over a dozen resignations which are going to take effect within the next couple of weeks. Most are going to Australia, they are so disillusioned with what we’ve got going on here.”
Powell said Nelson Hospital didn’t have a good reputation among the profession. “It is known for management not being proactive. A management that don’t listen to the clinicians when they’re raising issues.”
Seeking answers from Health NZ
1News sent a series of questions to Health New Zealand about the Nelson Hospital orthopaedic department and resident doctors but its response did not address these questions.
Members of the Health New Zealand team looking into the problems in Nelson are on the ground but 1News has not been able to interview them. 1News has also been requesting an interview with Nelson Hospital boss Lexie O’Shae.
Health New Zealand’s chief clinicial officer Dr Richard Sullivan told 1News he would be joining the team in Nelson next week. He said today he wasn’t aware of some of the issues at the hospital until seeing the stories from 1News.
“I was aware of one of those cases for some time ago but the other cases were we weren’t aware of. That’s why we’re sending everyone of our team to go and look into, you know, what’s been shown in the media and therefore what we need to do about it,” he said.
The team in Nelson was looking into four areas: Workforce issues; performance (particularly around first specialist appointments; facilities; and a quality and clinicial review looking at the issues with patient care.
