Latest / Early Edition with Ryan Bridge / Malcolm Mulholland: Patient Voice Aotearoa Chair on Starship cancer treatment delays

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Malcolm Mulholland: Patient Voice Aotearoa Chair on Starship cancer treatment delays · Early Edition with Ryan Bridge

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: To Starship Hospital we go where cancer treatments for children
• 0:02
  Speaker 1: have been delayed and the claim is because there's not
• 0:04
  Speaker 1: enough nurses to administer the medicine and the health minister
• 0:07
  Speaker 1: says only a handful of sessions were delayed and only
• 0:09
  Speaker 1: by a few days and no more than a week.
• 0:11
  Speaker 1: But nurses say Health New Zealand has known about these shortages.
• 0:15
  Speaker 2: August is just six weeks ago. We knew that there
• 0:17
  Speaker 2: were shortages. We knew that there were shortages across the year.
• 0:20
  Speaker 2: So this could have been prevented.
• 0:22
  Speaker 1: So Malcolm Mulholland is the chair of Patient Voice Aotearoa,
• 0:25
  Speaker 1: joins me now. Malcolm, good morning to you. What's really
• 0:27
  Speaker 1: going down?
• 0:29
  Speaker 2: Yeah, this is about shortage of staff, but I've had
• 0:32
  Speaker 2: the families reach out to me via an intermediary and
• 0:35
  Speaker 2: they're scared and raked with stress. They don't believe the
• 0:39
  Speaker 2: minister because the way in which this news has gotten
• 0:42
  Speaker 2: out to the community. So they just want the truth.
• 0:45
  Speaker 1: So the minister says it's less than a week delay.
• 0:48
  Speaker 1: Is that really making difference to the treatment?
• 0:51
  Speaker 2: It can do in certain circumstances. So it's not uncommon
• 0:55
  Speaker 2: for children to receive treatment over successive days rather than weeks.
• 1:00
  Speaker 2: It really does depend on the regime that they've been
• 1:03
  Speaker 2: put on. And that's a question that the minister needs
• 1:06
  Speaker 2: to answer.
• 1:08
  Speaker 1: Do you believe the minister when he says it's just
• 1:11
  Speaker 1: a few days delay?
• 1:13
  Speaker 2: Look, it could very well be that. But again, we
• 1:17
  Speaker 2: need to know what the regime is that these children
• 1:20
  Speaker 2: who are being affected are on. Once that can be determined,
• 1:24
  Speaker 2: then you can decide what the impact is on the
• 1:28
  Speaker 2: children and what the impact is on patient safety.
• 1:30
  Speaker 1: Is this a symptom of the government's nurses hiring freeze
• 1:34
  Speaker 1: or are the two cases unrelated?
• 1:36
  Speaker 2: No, they're definitely related. And we're currently on a nationwide
• 1:40
  Speaker 2: tour looking at the health system. We started in Bluff.
• 1:43
  Speaker 2: We're now up in Auckland. We've been hearing that right
• 1:45
  Speaker 2: throughout the country. There's been a hiring freeze and it's
• 1:48
  Speaker 2: coming home to roost.
• 1:50
  Speaker 1: There are people who say, and they say it on
• 1:52
  Speaker 1: the talkback quite a lot, you know, all of a sudden,
• 1:54
  Speaker 1: come election time, we get all these stories being leaked
• 1:57
  Speaker 1: all about a degrading health system. and that it is
• 2:00
  Speaker 1: politically motivated by people who would like a change in
• 2:02
  Speaker 1: the government. Is this a politically motivated release of news
• 2:06
  Speaker 1: in your opinion or not?
• 2:07
  Speaker 2: Well, I don't know who the whistleblower was. I am
• 2:10
  Speaker 2: thankful for the whistleblower, though, because what I would say
• 2:13
  Speaker 2: is nobody knew up until that point. And I think
• 2:16
  Speaker 2: the way in which this has been handled, the messaging
• 2:18
  Speaker 2: that has come from the HNZ hierarchy, has been deplorable.
• 2:23
  Speaker 2: This isn't about making you look bad. This is actually
• 2:25
  Speaker 2: about getting the truth out there so that families can
• 2:28
  Speaker 2: make an informed decision.
• 2:30
  Speaker 1: Malcolm, I thank you for your time this morning. Malcolm Mulholland,
• 2:33
  Speaker 1: who is the chair of Patient Voice Aotearoa.
• 2:38
  Speaker 2: For more from Early Edition with Ryan Bridge, listen live
• 2:41
  Speaker 2: to News Talk ZB from 5 a.m. weekdays or follow
• 2:44
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