Documents have revealed bullying at Dunedin Hospital. Photo / RNZ / Nate McKinnon
By Phil Pennington of RNZ
Bullying at Dunedin Hospital has been revealed in documents released after reports some staff at Southland Hospital had been told they couldn’t chat to each other for more than five minutes.
RNZ first revealed complaints flagged by the PSA union involving staff in Southland’s clinical records and coding team in May 2025.
But the problems ran deeper and wider than that, documents newly released under the Official Information Act (OIA) showed.
In May, Health NZ Southern told RNZ it did not have a “no talking” policy and it had held an “amicable” meeting with the union in March.
But in June the talk was of “longstanding issues, which have remained largely unaddressed”.
One person who said they had worked there, told RNZ: “I have comforted staff while they cried about the bullying they received, and I was comforted for mine.”
The OIA documents also revealed the Dunedin investigation, triggered when some current and former members of its coding team made allegations against two senior staff just over two years ago.
The investigation upheld an allegation against a senior staffer of “punishment and ostracism of staff and alleged bullying behaviours towards staff who raise concerns or are in conflict with management”.
A second complaint about denying staff the chance to discuss issues in performance appraisals, was also substantiated.
Nine other complaints were not substantiated.
Health NZ declined to tell RNZ what it had done next. “As this is an individual employment matter, we are unable to comment any further.”
At Southland, the records newly released to RNZ showed staff complaints dating back to June 2024.
A one-page document titled, ‘Records Staff live in fear at Southland Hospital’ was stamped as received on May 15, 2025. The rest was blanked out by officials.
A health district director Dr Hywel Lloyd handled the coding team’s complaints.
He had told RNZ in May that, “There have not been any other concerns raised with HR in relation to staff for the past five years” and no personal grievances in the past year.
After that, Lloyd received an unsigned note expressing anger at what he had said (this note was also mailed to RNZ).
“There have been complaints about [redacted in OIA] (threatening), about the bullying behaviour of [redacted],” the notes said.
“If HR have lost them, there are plenty of former staff members who will resubmit them.”
It finished with: “Your lack of support for us is disappointing.”
Lloyd had made reassurances the team’s complaints were being dealt with in a routine way – though the PSA union at the same time said they were not resolved.
The newly released documents show that a week after RNZ’s story, Lloyd travelled from Dunedin to Invercargill for an “emotionally challenging” meeting with the coding staff.
He later told them, “I appreciate that the media attention as well as the longstanding issues, which have remained largely unaddressed, will be challenging and an unnecessary distraction from the important work you do”.
A few days later, he had set up a workshop.
He also escalated the matter to Commissioner Lester Levy’s office for a culture and team dynamic review. This review was internal and would not be released, Health NZ told RNZ this week.
After the story in May, RNZ was contacted by half a dozen people claiming they had worked in the team or knew others who had and found it awful.
Someone who said they had worked there wrote that the media reporting was “only the tip of the iceberg for some of the experiences I had in that office”.
Another sent a copy of a text apparently sent from a manager to staff in January this year.
“We discussed your office chats and that I am OK with you having a 5 minute catch up first thing in the morning but anything longer should be taken to your breaks for catch up,” the text read.
A month later came the complaints to the PSA, including about the five-minute rule, members not being “allowed to take their breaks together” and progression up the ranks.
The OIA showed another text, by one manager to another, on the day the story ran: “[It] seems to focus on not being allowed to talk which is 100 per cent inaccurate.”
The subsequent messages to RNZ included an email saying, “Dozens of people were/are affected but are too scared to talk about it, or they want to put the trauma behind them.”
Another said, “There are consistent issues nationally with record keeping and coding specifically, due to issues with the specialist training coding requires and entrenched management issues.”
Health NZ and the PSA worked through the complaints. The former concluded that one member of the coding team had been struggling to get any training or progression, which was “very problematic”.
The complaint around breaks was sorted out, and Health NZ stated, “There is no restriction on team members talking reasonably”.
The OIA showed Lloyd’s May 28 meeting with the staff generated its own formal complaint, but it was not clear about what.
The internal email record showed Lloyd on June 13 had suggested the media reporting was a “challenging and an unnecessary distraction from the important work you do that would upset staff”.
This week, he told RNZ in a statement that the team’s concerns were appreciated and they were now working through the recommendations of the independent review conducted out of Levy’s office.
“We are committed to working with the team to ensure a safe, supportive, high-performing environment aligned with organisational values,” Lloyd said.
“Health New Zealand does not consider media reporting of these matters to be a problem. We do however acknowledge that staff may find the media attention on these matters to be unsettling and a distraction from the fantastic and important work they do.”
- RNZ