NEWS HR
August 8, 2018
Hutt Hospital on High St, Lower Hutt was in lockdown after a threat was made just before 6pm on Tuesday. Police were called to the hospital on High St at about 6pm on Tuesday after receiving a report of concerning information. As of 8pm, a source close to the hospital said that armed police remained in attendance.
August 6, 2018
Police want help in finding a teenaged sex attacker after two women were assaulted in the Waikato Hospital staff car park. The first assault happened about 4pm on Friday, the second shortly after. Burgess was unsure if the victims were hospital staff. The offender is described as 16 and white.
July 24, 2018
Krystal Janet Marie Pearce, 33, was sentenced to more than two years and two months in jail when she appeared in the Hamilton District Court on Tuesday. Krystal Pearce was fully aware of the gravity of what she was doing when she slipped into the room of a 91-year-old woman in a Hamilton rest home and stole her handbag. She was aware because it was the same thing she had done and been convicted of in 2011. Krystal Janet Marie Pearce, 33, was jailed for two years and two months when she appeared in the Hamilton District Court on Tuesday, on one charge of burglary and five of using a document – her victim’s credit card – for pecuniary advantage. Judge Philip Crayton said while the burglary took place during the day – generally a tempering factor for people on such charges because the occupants are usually not at home – this was not the case for rest homes. And Pearce was also fully aware of the vulnerability of her victim because the Selwyn Wilson Carlile Retirement Village in Hamilton east was a previous target among her 36 recorded burglaries.
July 24, 2018
Thieves hijacked a young nurse’s car moments after she was caught up in a fender bender. The actions left the 21-year-old Hamilton newcomer shocked and teary on the roadside in Hamilton East on Monday – with no ride to clock in for her shift at Waikato Hospital. Police would later spot the stolen Legnum and chase it to Lake Rotoroa where the culprits scarpered. The woman, was on her way to work at Waikato Hospital around 2pm on Monday when she was involved in a minor crash on Grey St.
July 24, 2018
An orthopaedic surgeon who forged prescriptions for himself and his wife was a “danger to the public” according to the Health Practitioners Disciplinary Tribunal, which fined him $19,000. American national Stephen Augustine worked at Gisborne Hospital from October, 2014 to March, 2016. On 20 occasions between August 2015 and March 2016 Augustine wrote prescriptions for codeine phosphate on Gisborne Hospital generic prescription pads under the name of a colleague and forged the colleague’s signature. He used his own patient details and those of his wife and presented the prescriptions at seven different community pharmacies in the Gisborne area and collected the drugs himself. He fraudulently obtained 1970 pills over a seven month period. Augustine’s offending led to his colleague being temporarily prevented by his employer from writing prescriptions. Police laid 20 charges against Augustine. He appeared in Gisborne District Court in May, 2016, and was discharged without conviction. The Health Practitioners Disciplinary Tribunal heard a charge against Augustine in April. One part of the charge related to his forging the signature of another medical practitioner. The other related to prescribing codeine phosphate tablets for his wife when he knew or ought to have known that such prescribing of a drug of dependence was inappropriate and/or contrary to acceptable medical practice. In a recently released finding the Tribunal said it “had no hesitation in finding the charge and each of its two particulars both severally and cumulatively amounted to professional misconduct”. Augustine, who did not attend the hearing, no longer lived in New Zealand and did not intend to return to practise medicine here, the Tribunal said. The Tribunal said there had been “plenty of opportunities” for Augustine to respond to the charges but he had not done so. “The Tribunal found the Doctor is a danger to the public which needs protection from him,” it said. Augustine had his doctor’s registration cancelled and was ordered to pay costs of $19,000. The Tribunal requested the NZ Medical Council to send a copy of its decision to the appropriate authorities in the States of Florida and Georgia and the Federal Authorities in the United States of America “so that those authorities there are fully conversant with the matters raised in this decision”.
July 20, 2018
Cardiologist Sam Wilson was the doctor who secretly filmed women in a toilet at Nelson Hospital. The High Court on Thursday rejected Wilson’s continued bid for name suppression over the secret filming of colleagues at the hospital and two visitors to his home between 2012 and 2014. Wilson, through his lawyers, issued a public apology for the pain and distress that his “selfish and foolish” actions had caused. The doctor resigned from the hospital after being charged in 2015, and is no longer working as a medical practitioner. He is also being investigated by the Medical Council and is likely to face disciplinary action.
July 6, 2018
There have been four suspected suicides in the past two years at aged residential care facilities in the Bay of Plenty – three in the Western Bay and one in the Eastern Bay. The four residential care facility residents suspected of taking their own lives were all over the age of 65. Three of the deaths occurred between July 1, 2016–June 30, 2017, and one was between July 1, 2017–June 30, 2018. All four were suspected suicides as official confirmation was subject to a coronial process.
June 29, 2018
Jose Miguel Dy faced seven charges of harassment at the Health Practitioners Disciplinary Tribunal earlier this year. Mr Dy had worked at the Remuera Care Home and Village since 2010, becoming a clinical manager in 2014. The tribunal heard that over the following two years he began harrassing five nurses and caregivers by making advances towards them. If they refused, he threatened to fire them. The Tribunal has ruled his actions were unacceptable and have significantly compromised the nursing profession’s standards. It added that Mr Dy was not remorseful and continued to be a risk to the public.
