Hutt Hospital doctors told to make beds, clean sinks

Hutt Hospital. Photo / Mark Mitchell

By Kate Green of RNZ

Doctors at Hutt Hospital are being asked to make beds and clean medical equipment, on top of a busy patient workload.

An email sent to all ED staff and seen by RNZ lays out which cleaning tasks are expected of clinical staff, and which are to be done by cleaners.

Clinical staff are expected to clean, among other things, commodes, hoists and patient washbowls, as well as beds, lockers, soap dispensers, sluice sinks and biohazard bags.

One doctor, who RNZ has agreed not to name, said: “On one shift I made seven beds, answered a million phone calls and fixed the printer. Is this a really good use of my time? I suspect I’m the most expensive person there.”

Meanwhile, they said the workload was increasing, and staff were slow to be replaced when they resigned.

“It’s smoke and mirrors,” they said. “So it’s officially not a freeze but on the front line, the reality is it’s a freeze, because people go off on maternity leave, and you can’t replace them without a long-winded process to get authority to recruit.”

The doctor said there were a number of vacancies that had not yet been approved for replacement, which meant other clinical staff were picking up the workload, and it meant some patients were not even getting in the door due to long wait times.

Hutt Hospital. Photo / Mark Mitchell

Little things were being missed.

“I’ve come onto a shift and seen an 80-year-old lady trying to climb out of her bed with the sides up to get to the toilet, and there was no one around to help her.”

The cleaning tasks were on top of all that. The department was sent an email in early July laying out the tasks.

“When I’m making beds, I’m not seeing a patient,” the doctor said – and that email was the first they had heard of a formalised expectation that clinical staff should be cleaning medical equipment.

But Te Whatu Ora Capital, Coast and Hutt Valley group director for operations Jamie Duncan said this was not a new arrangement.

In a statement, he said: “There has been no change to our cleaning arrangements or funding.

“The email [...] relates to a longstanding practice where our cleaners do not clean Hutt ED medical equipment, areas or items that may hold private patient information, or areas where patients’ personal belongings are stored.

“Areas such as these are cleaned by clinical staff, with the work usually undertaken by health care assistants.”

- RNZ