John MacDonald: Yes Minister, there is a health crisis

Politicians either love the word "crisis" - or they hate it.
Generally, it’s opposition politicians who love it and it’s the ones in government who can’t bring themselves to say it.
Remember all the dancing-on-a-pinhead the Government did earlier this year over the cost of living crisis? It was like pulling hens’ teeth getting them to admit that. And we’re seeing it again today - this time it’s health.
The New Zealand Women in Medicine Charitable Trust has surveyed 900 doctors working across 30 different areas of medicine. And 93.5 percent of them say there is definitely a health crisis and 6.3 percent say there is probably a crisis.
Add them together and you get 99.8 percent. That leaves 0.2 percent who must think everything is tickety boo.
And so in response to the survey findings, the New Zealand Women in Medicine Charitable Trust wrote to the Prime Minister yesterday telling her that the health system is at significant risk.
Here’s one of the things they said in the letter to the PM yesterday: “The results indicate that we are at risk of a catastrophic collapse of the healthcare workforce.” And it was signed by 923 doctors working at GP clinics and hospitals.
So, following that, Health Minister Andrew Little comes on with Mike this morning - and Mike asks him “is there a crisis?”. And here’s what he says: “As Minister, I’ve been asked to declare probably half a dozen crises in the health sector in the two years I’ve been Minister. It is under pressure, management are doing the best they can with what they can and the frontline healthcare workforce are doing a terrific job in the circumstances. But we will get through this.”
And Andrew Little is right in some respects. We will get through this. Unless Vladimir Putin drops a nuclear bomb on us, we’ll get through it. Just like we get through a lot of things.
But talk about falling on deaf ears.
93.5 percent of doctors say there is definitely a health crisis and 6.3 percent say there is probably a crisis. And we get the Health Minister responding by saying the healthcare system “is under pressure” and “struggling to keep up. But refusing to say it’s a crisis.
And not just despite the numbers and stats from the survey, but also despite comments like this that one doctor made when they took part in the survey. “The system is beyond a crisis. I feel sorry for new grads coming into this crisis. It will break many.”
And that’s the language a St John’s paramedic was using when he spoke on the TV news last night.
He said he was leaving because he was broken. Another St John’s person was saying the health crisis is meaning elderly who fall in their bathrooms at night are being stuck there for hours before an ambulance can turn up.
This is because it’s taking so long to get people admitted to our overcrowded hospitals that the ambulance people are finding themselves having to stay at the hospitals much longer than they should - and not back out on the road responding to the next call.
But “we’ll get through this”, according to the Health Minister. And yes we will get through this, but is like it or lump it really the response our doctors and other medical professionals deserve from our government? In particular, the Minister responsible for the health system.
It seems that, when it suits, the Government is more than happy to tell us that it listens to advice from medical professionals. How many times have we heard that line trotted out over the last few years?
How then, can it suddenly not be listening to the medical experts when they’re saying that the health system they work in, is in crisis? Actually writing to the Prime Minister telling her and Andrew Little just that.
I can only imagine how betrayed they must be feeling today, hearing the Health Minister fob it off like he has.
They’re saying things like: “I don’t have the words to describe how awful work has become. I am yet to see...

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