NEWS HR

September 14, 2017

Healthcare workers who looked after burns victim Heather Bills have given conflicting accounts of what happened the night she suffered a fatal brain injury. Bills died in 2013 while in the care of Middlemore Hospital in south Auckland, having survived a huge fire at her Orakei home six weeks earlier. The 64-year-old was rescued from the explosive blaze and admitted to hospital with serious burns. However, she died six weeks later on December 26, having suffered an irreversible brain injury after being given a large dose of insulin. She died with her daughter at her side, and an inquest at Auckland District Court has heard conflicting accounts of what took place in the lead-up to her death. Healthcare worker Sharon Connors told the court that her shift on the night that Bills died was dull and boring. “Time stood still and I was glad the shift was only four hours,” she said. She claimed she remembered hearing the machines in Bills’ room beeping but said they weren’t an issue. Bills’ daughter Michelle Maher questioned Connors by reading part of the statement of nurse Harmeet Sokhi, who also cared for the burns victim. In her earlier statement, Sokhi described the noise of the machines in Bills’ room as being loud enough to be heard from the corridor outside of her room. “When I got to Heather’s room I found that Sharon, the watch, seemed oblivious to the fact that three of the machines were beeping,” she said. Sokhi said she was perplexed that Connors seemed to be unmoved by the loud beeping of the pumps. Nirmala Salim was handed over care of Bills when Connors’ shift ended. Connors said Bills was sleepy but well and did not mention the monitors going off earlier in the shift, Salim said. But Salim soon noticed Bills’ heart rate was racing and that she was in pain. “I could tell she was different and I was concerned something was wrong,” Salim said. Salim was capable of taking a blood sugar test and providing information to doctors, but was not told by the resource nurse to monitor Bills’ blood sugar levels. Salim was aware Bills had suicidal thoughts but said she did not know anything of her personality. “I did not [know] anything related to her death,” Salim said. The court had already heard how a nurse told doctors that Bills’ blood sugar levels were within normal limits. Dr Lit Son Yoong and Dr Amanjeet Toor gave evidence earlier on Monday: Yoong was the registrar on duty when Bills’ condition deteriorated. He told the inquest he believed he had asked for her blood sugar levels. “They told me her blood pressure and blood sugars were fine. I recall that her blood sugar was five or six, one of those two numbers. Anything above four and under 11 is fine.” That information led the doctors to rule out the possibility Bills was having a hypoglycemic, or low blood sugar, episode, he said. Bills’ blood pressure was unremarkable, he said. Dr Amanjeet Toor told the inquest Bills sounded rattly, and the nurse noted she looked more puffy and was sweating heavily. His initial impression was Bills was suffering from an acute pulmonary oedema, or fluid in the lungs. “I asked what her blood sugar levels were and [was] told they were normal. I didn’t consider her to be hypoglycemic and to question the nurse.” Bills was described by medical staff as depressed, non-engaged, and uncommunicative. In her evidence clinical resource nurse Fiona Morse said she had heard Bills had banned all visitors, including her own daughter. During a conversation after Bills’ death, Morse was told by a colleague she’d seen a blood sugar kit in Bills’ room. “She said she’d wondered why it was there because Heather wasn’t a diabetic.” Bills’ daughter broke down when questioning Morse about her mother’s suicidal thoughts. She mentioned a conversation she’d had where her mother talked about assisted suicide in Fiji. “I told mum I’d help her with anything but I wouldn’t help her with that.” Charge nurse manager Vina Singh told the court Bills had constantly asked staff if she could die and if she’d done enough to die. ​Earlier in the inquest, nurse Tania Sachill told the court Bills had been quite distressed. “She was frustrated about being alive. She was shocked at herself that she had stuffed it up. She would make comments like, ‘how could I be so stupid?’ and then whack the bed with her hands. “She was saying how she was useless and had never done anything right. She said we should let her go and she was just a burden,” Scahill said.

September 1, 2017

Sir Richard Faull has been appointed as Patron of Alzheimer’s NZ.

August 25, 2017

Staff at Waitemata DHB, including workers at North Shore Hospital, are increasingly reporting abuse from patients and visitors. Abusive incidents involving staff at Auckland’s Waitemata District Health Board are on the rise. The DHB reported 169 health and safety incidents causing harm to staff, across its services in June, of which 36 were physical assaults. It is the highest number of events in a single month recorded for the 24 months prior, equal to the number reported in September last year. The incidents included 33 body assaults and 19 general verbal assaults, 17 slips, trips or falls, and eight which were the result of unsafe practices or procedures. There was one incident of assault with a hand-held weapon, two assaults with a projectile, one incident of bullying or harassment, and three verbal assaults labelled threats.

August 24, 2017

Georgie Ferrari has been appointed chief executive of the Wellington Community Trust, replacing Mark Cassidy who departed in February 2017.

August 21, 2017

A former employee of a residential care home made her first appearance in court today. The 35-year-old is charged with distributing intimate images without consent. She and four other employees allegedly posted the images on Snapchat.

August 18, 2017

A former rest home worker has failed to prove her employer forced her out of her job, with the Employment Relations Authority describing some of her claims as “confused”. Nicola Francis took Ruawai Rest Home to the Employment Relations Authority, claiming she had been unjustifiably dismissed because she was given an employment agreement that did not reflect her permanent employment status. She also claimed she had not been paid for public holidays. Ruawai, a Feilding care facility for the elderly, was purchased by its manager Andrea Thompson in April 2015. Thompson kept existing staff on, but they were given new employment agreements. The agreements were not open-ended, with most running for a year. Francis’, however, ran for six months. The new agreement was good at first for Francis as it gave her regular hours – typically four days on, four days off — but she ended up having issues and asked for them to change it. Francis told the authority this didn’t happen, and it could be hard for her to get work elsewhere because she had been jailed for criminal offending. She was called by Thompson the next month, who said they had to meet because of “drama” and concerns she had told staff and residents about her jail time. The pair met, during which she was offered another six-month contract. Francis sought advice and was told the fixed term clause was invalid, and she felt she was entitled to be considered a fulltime employee and given a pay rise. Tensions rose, with Francis lodging a personal grievance. Ruawai engaged legal counsel, and let Francis’ representative know in March 2016 she was considered a fulltime employee. Francis said the working environment became even tenser after lodging the personal grievance, despite Thompson giving her extra shifts and resolving an issue around meal break payment. However, she felt comments being made about her made her feel staff were against her and blaming her for empty beds at the rest home. She also claimed she was not invited to a leaving dinner for a colleague, although the staff member was responsible for the guest list, not Thompson. Francis resigned in September 2016, using her resignation letter to claim Rawai actually fired her in 2015 by offering her a fixed term contract, it did not pay her fairly, and she was not rostered for 40 hours a week. Authority member Michael Loftus found Francis had been paid above minimum wage, and she had no right to a pay rise just because she thought her rate was too low. Francis had accepted the hours she was offered when she signed her contract, he said. “This is not a ground upon which a claim for constructive dismissal can be based.” While the fixed term agreement was unenforceable because it did not comply with the law, it could not constitute a dismissal, Loftus said. “It is equally difficult to conclude it even constitutes a disadvantage.” The threat of termination temporarily existed, but it never happened, and Ruawai fixed the issue. Loftus said that meant they had not breached their duty to Francis, so there could be no breach of the law. Any other issues fell more into the category of Francis being unhappy than Ruawai doing anything to force her out, Loftus said. All her claims were dismissed, and costs were reserved.

August 7, 2017

Murray Lowenthal is Waitomo’s recipient of Waikato District Health Boards’ (DHB) Paul Keesing Award. Murray was nominated by the DHB’s Waitomo Community Health Forum and received the award in July for his services to the health of his community, particularly in aged care.

July 25, 2017

Metlifecare has announced the appointments of Mark Binns and Rod Snodgrass as Independent Directors.