Cross check your bill
Check your hospital bill against your clinical file (you may need to do this at the hospital concerned). If there are tests and scans on your bill that do not have a corresponding entry on your clinical file (check the dates as well as items), you can contest them.
Kate Ryder
Your care may be 'rationed'
Under-resourcing means nurses often have to make difficult decisions about what care is critical for patient survival and what can be left undone. ‘Care rationing’ in New Zealand has left some nurses skipping vital recordings and ignoring call bells, with nurses in flat-out rescue mode, a recent investigation found. It reported that some nurses are so busy helping doctors, organising medications and filing paperwork that they get to spend only about three hours of their shift with patients.
press.co.nz, 2014
Violence is on the increase
There is more violence than ever before. Nurses have been attacked, bitten, spat on and choked. In fact, I’m aware of only a handful of nurses who haven’t been victims of some sort of verbal or physical attack. Staff are dealing with more intoxicated patients and people who are suffering methamphetamine-fuelled psychosis. There is an increasing acting out from patients and sometimes it’s relatives, too.
Susanne Trim, New Zealand Nurses Organisation
Discover everything you need to know about meth.