Tova podcast: Arise Sir Ashley - Dr Bloomfield enters the heated health debate

Thursday, 15 August 2024

Tova O’Brien is Stuff’s Chief Political Correspondent and host of the political podcast, Tova. Listen to the latest episode, ‘Sir Ashley Bloomfield on the health of our health service’, here.

It’s been a little over two years since Dr - now Sir - Ashley Bloomfield stepped down as the Director General of Health and those daily Covid updates.

But he’s kept a keen eye on the health system - the reforms, staffing levels, waitlists, budgets - and all manner of things relating to health, like changes to the smokefree laws and tax breaks for tobacco companies.

And after an enormous response from doctors, nurses and patients after last week’s podcast with Lester Levy, the new health commissioner appointed by the Government to fix the “crisis” - as he called it - we decided to stay on the fraught and fiery issue of health.

Sir Ashley wants some of the heat and hyperbole taken out of the health debate. He joined us for an extended, exclusive interview.

We also hear from the health frontline: Jordan Tewhaiti-Smith is an obstetrics and gynaecology trainee based in Christchurch. He's also an executive member of STONZ, the union representing about half the junior doctors in NZ.

There was very little optimism in the feedback we received after the interview with Professor Levy. Health staff in particular wanted to remain anonymous, fearing that going public could lead to repercussions.

This is from a emergency department nurse in a provincial town:

“For the Health Commissioner to say there’s no hiring freeze on the frontline is absolute crap. We have FTE that we need to employ but can’t. Our ED is drowning, as are most EDs around the country. We are short-staffed, overworked and feeling completely undervalued.”

This from a senior doctor:

“The drivel from Lester Levy made my blood boil. This is a man who wants to claim credibility in being a doctor for over 40 years but doesn’t seem to understand that seeing 40 patients in one clinic is ridiculous. When was the last time he practised clinical medicine?”

This from someone who’s describes themselves as being part of what the Government has called the “bloated bureaucracy” facing job cuts:

“I just can’t bear the bullshit he spins. I have been working a minimum of ten-hour days all year. Cuts to programmes of work and the staff who design and manage them at a national level will be seriously detrimental to the system, staff and the patients/people who use health services.”

Many of our listeners told us of long waits in emergency departments where overworked staff always did their best - a theme one patient summarised like this:

“The system feels inefficient yet those on the frontline are extremely efficient.”

We wanted to speak to Health Minister Shane Reti. We’ve been trying to speak to him for more than a month.

But he refused, and among the reasons given by his press secretary was that we’d already spoken to Professor Levy. We said we wanted to give the minister an opportunity to speak to the concerns of our listeners. We’ll keep trying.