Te Whatu Ora 'to act quickly' on Southland mental health unit concerns
“We acknowledge there have been many challenges for this service for several years, in particular the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic and ongoing staff vacancies across the health care system."
Te Whatu Ora won’t be releasing findings of an internal review into the Southland Hospital’s mental health unit, despite Invercargill MP Penny Simmonds’ call to do so.
On Monday Simmonds said she had lodged an Official Information Act request to have the review released publicly to ensure that clinicians’ concerns are heard and that staffing issues are addressed.
The Invercargill Acute Mental Health Unit is a 16-inpatient-bed facility on the Southland Hospital site. It is part of the Adult Community Services and the wider Adult Community/Child Adolescent and Family services for Southland.
Simmonds said there had been a “chronic understaffing” at the unit for years and the Government had done little to support staff and patients.
She said Southlanders need to understand what is happening with mental health services in the province.
Te Whatu Ora Southern responded on Tuesday saying it will not release the review document publicly while it works through the recommendations with staff.
The Southland Hospital Mental Health, Addictions, and Intellectual Disability Service (MHAIDS) review was commissioned in March by Te Whatu Ora Southern Directorate Leadership Team (DLT).
It followed concerns raised by clinicians regarding workplace culture, communication, working relationships, models of care, and the impacts of workforce shortages. More than 30 staff were interviewed.
Hamish Brown - Te Whata Ora Southern’s Interim Lead, Hospital and Specialist Services - said the review had been taken very seriously and they are committed to improving the Southland MHAIDS for staff, patients, and their whānau.
“We acknowledge there have been many challenges for this service for several years, in particular the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic and ongoing staff vacancies across the health care system and the effects these have had on our staff,” Brown said.
“We are committed to acting quickly to improve staff wellbeing and relationships within the service and the wider MHAID community.”
The Southland Mental Health team has a dedicated team of 4.4FTE Senior Medical Officers (SMO) who work between the Inpatient Unit and Adult Community service.
There is 5.6FTE SMO vacancies that Te Whatu Ora is actively recruiting for, and the team has locum support.
In the Inpatient Unit there are currently 29.5FTE nurses (with 3.5FTE vacancies), 7.8FTE Health Care Assistants (with 1.1FTE vacancies) and 2.1FTE Allied Health (with 1.3FTE vacancies).
Southern is no different to the rest of Aotearoa with shortages in our health care workforce, Brown said.
Brown said Te Whatu Ora Southern’s senior leadership team had met with staff to discuss the review and recommendations and have a committed process in place to move forward.
“We are actively recruiting for Senior Medical Officers and have recently employed a Nurse Consultant to better support interprofessional working.”
“We are committed to a governance structure that enables us to work together in an open and transparent way that provides opportunities for staff to participate in solutions to improve service delivery. We are in a process of changing the leadership model across MHAIDs to a more collaborative model with a collective approach to support our workforce.
“We are very grateful for our staff’s hard work, commitment, and dedication to the Southland MHAID services. We know it has been a very tough time for our staff and we want to acknowledge this. We appreciate staff raising their concerns, taking part in the review process and working with us to improve service delivery and workplace culture.”