Good healthcare: My experience at Whangarei Hospital was fantastic. Photo by www.electives.net
This is my experience and I cannot speak for all.
It all started a couple of months ago, when I found myself hospitalised three times - two from complications, which resulted in the third stay and surgery.
I was first taken by ambulance to the satellite facility, where a GP stabilized me enough to be transported to Whangarei, three-quarters of an hour away, where I stayed for four days in the surgical unit while my condition was diagnosed and a decision for urgent surgery was made.
The second hospital admission was the actual surgery.
Third time, I found myself being transported again by ambulance, suffering from massive pain, to be put under the microscope but with no clear reason for the pain.
On all of these stays, health and medical staff were literally run off their feet, particularly the regional hospital at Whangarei, where the surgical unit appeared to have a revolving door.
Patients would leave the hospital, only to be replaced by new ones in a short succession of time.
At one point, I was told the unit had between 25 and 35 post-operative patients and only five nursing staff covering the lot.
During my surgery stay, I would not have been left alone, post-operatively, without a nurse checking on me every 15 to 20 minutes.
If any staff were stressed, or if there were any communication differences, you would never have known it. All were completely professional in the way they dealt with patients' and with each other.
Yet with the high amount of pressure they appeared to be under, with weight of numbers, people would be forgiven for getting a little frazzled from time to time!
I just felt it was worth giving them praise for their fantastic service and it was another example of why our health and medical professionals are held in high regard all over the world.
To your health.
Robyn
BTO
