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NZ man dies after allegedly waiting 9 hours in hospital A&E, found unconscious on toilet floor
An eyewitness observed the hospital to be understaffed.
July 02, 2026, 03:21 PM
Images via Google Maps, Canva (right image for illustrative purposes only).
A man in New Zealand died while waiting in the emergency department of a local hospital.
He was found unconscious on the toilet floor and had allegedly been waiting for nine hours.
Crowded emergency department
According to local media reports, the incident took place in the wee hours of Tuesday (Jun. 30).
An eyewitness, Samantha Browne told Radio New Zealand that she arrived at the hospital, Waikato Hospital in Hamilton, New Zealand, at about 4:30pm on Monday (Jun. 29).
She recounted that "every single chair was filled" by the time she was placed in the waiting room.
She described the emergency department as "chaotic" and "stressful", with the nurses trying their best with the number of people on staff.
Man found unconscious
Between 1:30am and 2am, a woman rushed out of the toilet near the waiting room and to the front desk, informing the staff that a man was unconscious on the floor, RNZ reported.
A nurse went to check and later pressed the emergency buzzer. About 20 staff rushed to assist afterwards.
About five minutes later, the man was wheeled away on a gurney, with six people running alongside while "holding bottles and whatnot".
A nurse was seen on top of the man performing cardio-pulmonary resuscitation.
Browne described the man as "blue".
Browne herself only got treated and left the hospital at 4am.
Understaffing
New Zealand's healthcare agency, HealthNZ, has opened a clinical review into the incident.
Stuff, citing NZ Herald, reported that the man had been waiting for nine hours.
An official of HealthNZ told the local paper that the target time to get people through the emergency department was six hours and said that the man had been "waiting longer than we wanted him to be waiting".
She declined to quote the exact time, RNZ reported.
The head of a New Zealand nurses' union has called for an independent inquiry into the incident, claiming that staff had told the union they were understaffed.
