Due to increasing staff shortages the West Coast District Health Board is to reduce the numbers of beds available in the combined medical and surgical wards at Grey Base Hospital. Shortages of nursing staff mean that to ensure that the ward is staffed at an appropriate and safe level, the bed numbers for acute patients have been reduced from twenty six to twenty one.
The reduction in bed numbers will result in some changes to the configuration of the wards and services available, in particular a reduction in inpatient elective surgery. Day surgery will continue as normal.
To make the best use of available nursing staff, the combined ward will relocate to Morice ward and incorporate the Critical Care Unit. The paediatric ward, which has been in Morice ward, will return to Parfitt ward. Hannan ward will also reduce rehabilitation beds by four.
"The reduction in beds was to align bed numbers with the available full and part-time staffing. This will enable us to use our limited pool of casual staff as short-term cover, and to provide day to day flexibility in maintaining key services," said General Manager Secondary Health Services, Chris Le Prou.
"We rely on casual staff to maintain bed numbers; however this is not currently possible. All of our staff have been doing an excellent job given the staffing pressures that we have been under, however these changes set a more realistic bed capacity given our current staffing levels."
"We are exploring all possibly ways of obtaining additional nursing staff. These include the "Southern Stars Shine" recruitment campaign to attract nurses to the West Coast District Health Board (www.southernstarsshine.co.nz)."
"The West Coast District Health Board regrets having to cut back elective surgery and recognises that this will create some additional stress to patients, however the steps taken are necessary to ensure that a safe level of services can be maintained."
For more information please contact
Bryan Jamieson
Community Liaison Officer
West Coast DHB
PO Box 387
Greymouth 7840
Phone (DDI): (03) 769-7665
Mobile: 027 245-9595
Email: