A man died at Waikato Hospital's Emergency Department on Monday night after being found unconscious in a toilet, with witnesses describing a chaotic scene in an overcrowded waiting room.

The patient had been assessed by triage staff before he was later discovered unresponsive. Resuscitation attempts were unsuccessful, Health NZ confirmed.

Overcrowded waiting room

Samantha Browne, who arrived at the ED around 4:30pm Monday with abdominal pain, said every seat in the waiting room was occupied. Her mother Deanne, who arrived about 30 minutes later, found no seating available and a queue extending outside the entrance.

Other patients told the Brownes they had been waiting for hours – one said 14 hours, another said six hours at Waikato after three hours at Anglesea Hospital.

"It was very chaotic," Browne said. "Both chaotic and also very stressful. The nurses were trying to do the best they could with the amount of people that they had – they were stressed, and the patients were getting quite agitated."

Emergency response

Sometime between 1:30am and 2am, a woman emerged from a toilet at the rear of the waiting area and notified reception staff that a man lay unconscious inside.

A nurse went into the toilet, located the unresponsive patient, and triggered the emergency alarm. Around 20 staff members responded. Staff called for resuscitation equipment and requested privacy screens to shield the patient from the waiting room.

"One lady was trying not to cry – she was the one that went and notified the nurse," Deanne said.

About five minutes after the alarm, staff wheeled the patient out on a gurney at speed, with around six people accompanying him and a nurse performing CPR as they moved. The patient appeared cyanotic, witnesses said.

Extended wait times

Browne waited four hours before receiving pain relief and was not seen by medical staff until around 10pm – approximately six hours after her arrival. She and her mother did not leave until 4am, with treatment only occurring in the final hour.

Browne had visited the ED twice in the previous month, with wait times of nine hours and 13 hours.

A nurse finishing her shift handed out complaint forms to those still waiting and urged them to document their experiences to support requests for more resources and staff.

Reviews and calls for inquiry

Health NZ has opened a rapid clinical review expected to conclude within a week, followed by a longer review over the next two months. The agency declined to comment on specifics, citing respect for the family and the ongoing review.

Cath Cronin, Health NZ executive regional director for Midland, said the target ED throughput time is six hours but patients are currently waiting longer. The deceased patient "was waiting longer than we wanted him to be waiting, but I'm not going to quote the exact time, because I think that needs to also be part of the clinical review," she said.

Cronin said the Waikato ED has recently been operating at or over capacity but could not confirm whether it was understaffed. "We aim to run that ED safely, and [staffing] is looked at every day," she said. "There's a lot of commentary coming through, and we just need to make sure we've got the facts."

The Nurses Organisation has demanded an independent inquiry into the death. Chief executive Paul Goulter said New Zealanders need assurance their local EDs have adequate staffing and that the public requires transparency, adding that nurses have limited trust in Health NZ examining its own systems.