24 Apr 2019

Middlemore moves to end violence in emergency department

From Morning Report, 8:44 am on 24 April 2019

South Auckland's busy Middlemore Hospital says it's doing everything it can to stop rising physical and verbal violence in its emergency department. A new pilot incident reporting system, known as Code Orange Calls, has recorded 256 incidents since it began in May 2018. It's replaced the former Incident Reporting System, which recorded 18 physical assaults and 20 cases of verbal abuse over more than a year, until last May. Details released under the Official Information Act show that most of the Code Orange reports concerned the waiting room, where the average wait for non-emergency care is about three hours. The head fo the Emergency Department, Vanessa Thornton, told RNZ health correspondent Karen Brown violence isn't only about patients angry about waiting times.