Latest news with #ArtNahill
RNZ News
18-05-2025
- Health
- RNZ News
Public worried about creeping health privatisation, lack of preventative care
Doctors Art Nahill, left, and Glenn Colquhoun in Kerikeri on the second stop of their 'Hīkoi for Health'. Photo: RNZ/Peter de Graaf Creeping privatisation and decades of neglect by successive governments are among the top concerns uncovered by doctors travelling the length of the North Island to hear people's views about the health system. Auckland hospital doctor Art Nahill and Horowhenua adolescent general practitioner Glenn Colquhoun spent two weeks on a 'Hīkoi for Health' from Kaitāia to Wellington, arriving in the capital on 8 May. Along the way, they tried to speak to as many people as possible about their healthcare experiences and their ideas about how the country's creaking health system could be fixed. Nahill said they were still working through the submissions and interviews they collected, but anger and frustration were common themes. "I know a hīkoi like this will self-select people who have had bad experiences, but we had a number of people who had very good healthcare experiences, but who are still angry and frustrated at the conditions under which healthcare workers are being asked to perform their roles," Nahill said. Another key theme to emerge was the need for a more robust public health system, focussed on keeping people healthy in the first place by ensuring access to good food, water and housing. "I think a lot of people realise that we have to turn off the tap of very unwell patients turning up to emergency rooms and other urgent care facilities," he said. Another common thread was the need for better access to health care providers. "There are people who have been waiting years to try to register with a GP, but all the books in the practices in that locale are all closed. There are lots and lots of people who are debilitated by things like arthritis in their hips or knees, who are waiting years to even be put on waiting lists, so people are getting very fed up with waiting." Nahill said many people wanted more funding for the healthcare system, although in his view, more investment on its own would not fix the problems. Simply training more doctors and nurses, for example, would not necessarily help, because there was nothing to keep them in a "broken healthcare system", when they could easily find work overseas. The Hīkoi for Health 'vanbulance' was transformed into a mobile work of art by painter Nigel Brown. Photo: RNZ/Peter de Graaf Many people they spoke to were angry about what they described as decades-long neglect of the health system and fearful of the way privatisation seemed to be occurring without public discussion. Nahill said he shared some of those concerns about privatisation, highlighted by a recent decision by Health New Zealand to outsource thousands of operations to private hospitals. "We only have a certain number of doctors in New Zealand, and if they work more and more in private, that means there are fewer and fewer of them available to do the same procedures in public, which means the waiting lists grow. We then have to outsource again to the private system, so it seems to me to be a silly way to deal with waiting lists." One of the stories that stood out for him from the two-week journey was from the father of a young girl who died in hospital, possibly due to a medical error, though that was unclear. "His only contact with the hospital after his daughter's death was a text several months later, offering him a few sessions of counselling to deal with his grief. He was incredibly angry and didn't know where to go." Another story was from a Kaitāia couple, who had tried to register with a GP for three years, but all practices in the town had closed their books. If they needed to see a doctor, they had to go to the emergency department or after-hours clinic at Kaitāia Hospital, or travel to Tauranga - an eight-hour drive each way - where their previous GP was based. However, Nahill said they also heard many positive stories about community organisations, iwi health providers especially, working creatively and cobbling together funding from various sources "to fill in the gaps that the broken healthcare system has left". "It struck us that, if we could scale up some of those small community services or find a way to allow more communities to manage their own healthcare, that might be the best healthcare system we could devise," he said. The next step in the project would be to assemble an expert thinktank to come up with a plan for a new kind of health system that addressed as many of the concerns raised during the hīkoi as possible. Nahill expected that would be completed in 8-12 months. Outside their day jobs in medicine, both Nahill and Colquhoun are known for their poetry. Nahill was not yet sure if the hīkoi would inspire any fresh writing, because he never intentionally set out to write poems. "Once an idea or an image marinates in my brain for long enough, poetry begins to form itself," he said. "I'm sure, at some point in time, some creative writing will come out of this hīkoi, it just needs a much longer period of time to marinate." Sign up for Ngā Pitopito Kōrero , a daily newsletter curated by our editors and delivered straight to your inbox every weekday.
Scoop
03-05-2025
- Health
- Scoop
Hīkoi for Health Reaches Final Leg – Heading to Parliament for May 8th Arrival
Press Release – Hikoi for Health They invite everyone to join on May 8th at Parliament grounds to hear a summary of the findings from their 'Peoples Inquiry.' May 3, 2025 As the Hīkoi for Health approaches its conclusion, doctors Art Nahill and Glenn Colquhoun are proud to announce that their 'vanbulance' journey is in its final days. From New Plymouth, they will be travelling south to Wellington, arriving at Parliament grounds on May 8th, where they will hold a gathering to share the stories and ideas for healthcare reform collected along the way. Throughout the campaign, they have been overwhelmed by the incredible support from communities across the North Island who have provided food, petrol vouchers, and accommodation. They have received hundreds of submissions through their website, and spoken with more individuals who have shared their stories of pain, frustration, and hope for the future of healthcare in Aotearoa. The voices they have heard reveal the need for urgent systemic change, but also highlight how communities are filling the void left by a failing and increasingly privatized health system. It is clear that collective experiences and ideas are vital in shaping a better future. They invite everyone to join us on May 8th at Parliament grounds to hear a summary of the findings from their 'People's Inquiry.' They hope to amplify these voices and press for the comprehensive healthcare reform they believe our country desperately needs. They also remind supporters that they have declared May 8th 'Band-Aid Day' where those who want to protest government inaction and support the call for reform should wear a bandage or plaster(s) in a prominent place as a symbol of the approach of successive governments to the failures of our health care system.
Scoop
03-05-2025
- Health
- Scoop
Hīkoi for Health Reaches Final Leg – Heading to Parliament for May 8th Arrival
May 3, 2025 As the Hīkoi for Health approaches its conclusion, doctors Art Nahill and Glenn Colquhoun are proud to announce that their "vanbulance" journey is in its final days. From New Plymouth, they will be travelling south to Wellington, arriving at Parliament grounds on May 8th, where they will hold a gathering to share the stories and ideas for healthcare reform collected along the way. Throughout the campaign, they have been overwhelmed by the incredible support from communities across the North Island who have provided food, petrol vouchers, and accommodation. They have received hundreds of submissions through their website, and spoken with more individuals who have shared their stories of pain, frustration, and hope for the future of healthcare in Aotearoa. The voices they have heard reveal the need for urgent systemic change, but also highlight how communities are filling the void left by a failing and increasingly privatized health system. It is clear that collective experiences and ideas are vital in shaping a better future. They invite everyone to join us on May 8th at Parliament grounds to hear a summary of the findings from their "People's Inquiry." They hope to amplify these voices and press for the comprehensive healthcare reform they believe our country desperately needs. They also remind supporters that they have declared May 8th "Band-Aid Day" where those who want to protest government inaction and support the call for reform should wear a bandage or plaster(s) in a prominent place as a symbol of the approach of successive governments to the failures of our health care system.
RNZ News
28-04-2025
- Health
- RNZ News
'Hīkoi for Health': Doctors on journey to change New Zealand's public health system
Doctors Art Nahill, left, and Glenn Colquhoun are taking their 'vanbulance' on a Hīkoi for Health to highlight the decline of New Zealand's public health system. Photo: RNZ/Peter de Graaf Two doctors are hoping to turn their anger and frustration over the decline of New Zealand's public health system into a bottom-up blueprint for change. Doctors Art Nahill and Glenn Colquhoun are on a two-week "Hīkoi for Health" the length of the North Island, talking to as many people as possible about their experiences of the health system and their ideas of how it could be fixed. With both men known for their poetry, they also hope to harness their anger and turn it into art. The second-hand van they are travelling in, dubbed the "vanbulance", is itself a mobile work of protest art, decorated by Dunedin painter Nigel Brown. Nahill said he and Colquhoun had become increasingly alarmed about the deterioration of the public health system. "It's just got to a point where we've become more and more angry and more and more frustrated, and all of our colleagues and our patients are angry and frustrated, and we wanted to try to do something to turn that anger and frustration into a positive movement," he said. "In some ways, we feel like we're doing the government's job, because we're going out trying to find out what a good health system would look like for people on the ground, and then we're going to try to put it together and present it to the government so they have a blueprint for moving forward." The pair's Hīkoi for Health started in Kaitāia on Saturday morning, stopped in Kerikeri that afternoon and in Whangārei on Sunday, spent Monday in Auckland, and heads to Hamilton on Tuesday. After stops in another seven towns and cities they aim to arrive at Parliament on 8 May to present a preliminary report of their findings. A more polished report would follow later, Nahill said. As well as the interviews they were collecting en route, people were invited to make submissions via the hīkoi's website . Nahill said more than 100 suggestions for a better health system had been received even before they left Kaitāia. The US-trained doctor said when he arrived in New Zealand 20 years ago, he could say "hand on heart" New Zealand's health system was better than the one he had left behind. "But over the past couple of decades, hospitals have become busier and busier. Emergency rooms are overrun. We've shifted from being carers to being assembly line workers, and our goal is to just push people through the system as quickly as possible. "There's a lot of moral injury that health care providers suffer, because we know we're not providing the care that people need and deserve," he said. "It's just reached a point where people are burning out and people are leaving the profession, which makes the whole problem worse, and we're not tackling the public health issues that are really driving the increased need for hospital care. Primary care is broken." The Hīkoi for Health "vanbulance" has been turned into a mobile work of art by painter Nigel Brown. Photo: RNZ/Peter de Graaf A big part of the problem was that the public health problems that made people sick in the first place had been largely ignored. Those problems included an "epidemic" of childhood trauma, poor nutrition, and drug and alcohol abuse. Nahill said he had patients desperate to give up drinking but he could not find a detox programme with space to take them. "So they just go back out and they drink some more, and they come back into the emergency room." Other problems facing the health system included the lack of long-term planning, and a political system that led to constant change and policy reversals. "At the same time, GPs are retiring and they're not being replaced quickly enough. Many hospital doctors are leaving the system to go and work in Australia or in the private system, where it's much more lucrative, which then means wait lists back up, and then hospitals end up contracting to the private groups for those very same doctor services." Nahill said he had his own ideas of what should be done, but right now he wanted to hear from the New Zealand public. The Hīkoi for Health 'vanbulance' has been turned into a mobile work of art by painter Nigel Brown. Photo: RNZ / Peter de Graaf Photo: RNZ/Peter de Graaf As it was, too much of the healthcare system was built form the top down, without regard for what people themselves believed they needed. So far the main themes coming through were access to primary care and people's desire to retain health services in their communities, rather than having to travel long distances to get help. People were also worried about the public-private divide, which some felt was eroding what used to be equitable access to healthcare for all New Zealanders, irrespective of income. Nahill said he had spoken to a couple who had lived in Kaitāia for three years but still had not been able to enrol with a GP. He had also spoken to a senior nurse who was now having to spend part of her time cleaning rooms, because the cleaners on her ward had been laid off. Nahill said that made a lie of claims that the current cuts to "back office" services would not affect frontline services. He urged anyone with an interest in health to come to one of the hui - the itinerary was on the website - or make a submission. The hīkoi would last only 13 days, and was limited to the North Island, because it was self-funded and carried out during their annual leave. "But we've had a really great response to what we're doing, and we're really very, very grateful. But we'd love more stories. We can't get enough stories." Sign up for Ngā Pitopito Kōrero, a daily newsletter curated by our editors and delivered straight to your inbox every weekday.
