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Speaker 1: Wellington Hospital converting some maternity beds to ED beds in

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Speaker 1: an attempt to bolster this struggling emergency department. The change

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Speaker 1: will bring the number of women's health wards down from

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Speaker 1: four to three for a four month trial period. Allison

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Speaker 1: Eddie is the chief executive at a College of Midwibes.

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Speaker 1: Good afternoon, Good afternoon. Good to have you on the show, Allison.

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Speaker 1: So who's squanting the beds exactly?

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Speaker 2: Well, we understand that Wellington Hospital ED is under significant

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Speaker 2: over crowding pressure and part of that pressure is because

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Speaker 2: they can't move people through the service into admission into

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Speaker 2: medical beds, so they're hoping to create well the plan

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Speaker 2: or proposed plan, is to recurpose some of the women's

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Speaker 2: health beds I think it's on the fourth floor of

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Speaker 2: Wellington Hospital into medical beds, so really reducing the footprint

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Speaker 2: for that service overall.

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Speaker 1: Presumably there'll be women who will fill some of the

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Speaker 1: health beds. I mean that it's not just men taking over.

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Speaker 1: But are they specific to women?

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Speaker 2: No, no, that I think the beds on the fourth

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Speaker 2: floor at the moment are sort of gynecology maternity beds,

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Speaker 2: nico birthing sweet But the intention I believe is to

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Speaker 2: take twelve of the beds which are currently allocated to

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Speaker 2: gynecology and make those general medical beds so they could

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Speaker 2: be meant or woman obviously depending on the patients presenting

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Speaker 2: in the ED.

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Speaker 1: Right, but not specialty beds the hospital. The hospitals is

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Speaker 1: they're not full at the moment. There are spare beds.

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Speaker 2: Well what we hear from our members in Wellington and

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Speaker 2: also the MAREST the Midwifes Union tell us that overall

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Speaker 2: the maternity facility at Wellington Woman's is over one hundred

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Speaker 2: percent occupancy. So there might be spared beds today, but

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Speaker 2: on a regular basis they're over capacity. And I think

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Speaker 2: the other really important thing to really bear in mind

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Speaker 2: is that maternity is like the ED of the maternity service.

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Speaker 2: You know, it's an acute service. It can have unpredictable

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Speaker 2: demand and it needs capacity to receive admissions on a

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Speaker 2: twenty four seven basis, just like ED does. See this

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Speaker 2: is and Wellington, Yeah, Wellington Hospital is actually a tertiary

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Speaker 2: referral center for quite a lot of outlying provincial units.

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Speaker 2: You know, it's serving a really large geographic area with

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Speaker 2: you know, many high risk, high risk patients that are

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Speaker 2: referred in there.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, it's interesting, Allison, because you're not the first person

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Speaker 1: to come on from you know, you're with the College

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Speaker 1: of Midwives, but not the first person to come on

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Speaker 1: from the sect of saying one thing and health is

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Speaker 1: saying another. So it's very hard for us to know

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Speaker 1: unless we go into this hospital. I mean, you haven't

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Speaker 1: been in there either. Who do we believe the midwives

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Speaker 1: who are there, or do we believe healthings it or what?

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Speaker 2: Well, you know, the midwives are on at the front

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Speaker 2: line every day doing the work and telling us that

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Speaker 2: the service is already over capacity. And what they're planning

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Speaker 2: to do is use what are currently supposedly single rooms

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Speaker 2: and make those double occupancy so they can double up

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Speaker 2: mothers and babies in the same room.

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Speaker 1: So there will still be enough room, but it just

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Speaker 1: that'd be doubled up.

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Speaker 2: That's what they're telling us.

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Speaker 1: Different story, isn't it. I mean, now you're talking about

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Speaker 1: the comfortability of a hospital as opposed to the acute

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Speaker 1: need of it.

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Speaker 2: Potentially, yes, but what our members are telling us that

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Speaker 2: those single rooms are already used as double rooms from

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Speaker 2: time to time, so that you know, it might look

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Speaker 2: like they've got twenty beds for example, but they've actually

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Speaker 2: got twenty four patients and so you know, for example,

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Speaker 2: so there will be more pressure on the service overall

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Speaker 2: because the beds are already over capacity.

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Speaker 1: Allison, appreciate your time this morning, this afternoon, rather Ellison Eddie,

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Speaker 1: the Chief Executive New Zealand Royal College of Midwives, making

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Speaker 1: the case for keeping them guy, no, no, thank you very much.

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