So when you're super addicted to alcohol (like my mum) it can be physically dangerous for you to detox. When mum injured herself quite badly drunkenly fighting with the cops and required extensive surgery, she had to wait for WEEKS under heavy sedation while she physically detoxed. If she hadn't have been injured, there is no way she would have been admitted to hospital for supervision and care during this process - I've just accepted that as a fact of life and never really questioned it. Partly because she doesn't want to stop and you can't force someone to accept medical treatment in this country (even if they have severe mental health issues - unless they prove they are crazy by trying to kill their psych assessor).
But also partly because it is nigh on impossible to get intensive treatment in NZ without an acute need. I'm glad to see this story in The Press about the shortage of acute treatment beds in Christchurch, but I'm almost a little unclear why it's news. After all, it's nothing new.
The health system in this country is failing it's patients, pure and simple. It's not the fault of the doctors and nurses, it's the fault of the bureaucrats. There are NOWHERE enough resources directed into our health system. Did you know that a doctor, not a nurse, is supposed to insert drips? But, as the nurse at Auckland Hospital explained last week to my boyfriend, if they left it to the doctors the whole hospital would grind to a halt. [She had worked 12 hours the previous day with one 10 minute break - and she's a smoker!] There are not enough doctors, not enough nurses, not enough rooms and beds, not enough operating theatres, not enough specialist equipment, and definitely not enough follow up.
To go back to the horribly depressing case of my mother - after several months in hospital as she waited for and underwent extensive hip surgery, detoxed and off the ciggies, mum was sent home with a bucketload of morphine, tramadol, paracetamol and laxatives, on top of her usual script for beta blockers, antidepressants and sleeping pills. Repeat prescriptions were given on request and she received several hours a week of home help, weekly physiotherapist visits and a bunch of rehabilitation equipment.
While she was in hospital, she had to be physically restrained after kicking herself - broken hip and all - out of traction. She tried to attack the nurses, racially abused the security staff the hospital had to station in her room, and was under the dual delusions that she had been injured at the airport on her way to Raratonga and that the hospital was the Shortland St set with all the hospital staff actors.
Despite this, no psychiatric evaluations were given. No extra follow up was allocated. As can be expected, she returned home alone to her big empty house and immediately started drinking, smoking and walking on her hip. She ended up reoffending numerous times, getting a second major surgery to fix the damage done by her refusal to adhere to doctors orders, and is now addicted to morphine alongside sleeping pills, alcohol and cigarettes.
This wasn't because the doctors and nurses are bad people or are negligent. It's because their time is stretched terribly thin so they can only treat acute cases. Preventative care is almost if not entirely non-existent in our health care system, as is adequate follow up. The bureaucracy is failing them massively by not getting enough resources and not allocating them well enough. I could see no evidence of initiative or integration in my mothers care, because overworked (and indeed, most definitely underpaid) nurses and doctors don't have the time or support needed to treat the individual as a whole, rather than their injury or illness.
Thanks, The Press, for starting to get the word out there, but dig a little deeper and you'll find the problem is not just in Canterbury and not just surrounding the numbers of detox beds. Treatment for addiction in this country is almost third world but, without a boatload of money and a major rethink of the bureaucracy, healthcare is sliding that way... quickly.
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