It is a situation that has led an alcohol health lobby to fire a missive at the alcohol companies for "cynically" targeting people to drink on the day.
The Otago Daily Times has been told by a patient people were waiting up to eight hours in the ED at Dunedin Hospital for an appointment on March 17 (St Patrick’s Day) and March 18.
Such was the backlog of patient admissions that staff took patients’ blood tests while they waited to be seen, and some patients were treated in the corridors.
"They took patients out of the waiting room into the corridor, put intravenous lines into their arms, took blood and put the patients back out to the waiting room."
It appeared they were still getting admissions due to St Patrick’s Day on the following day.
Alcohol Health Watch executive director Andrew Galloway said he was not surprised at the spike in ED admissions.
"In this case, this is an event which has been really pushed on the students by the alcohol industry. You could call it quite cynically so.
"Certainly alcohol is a driver of a range of harms, including emergency department presentations, and in particular when alcohol is consumed excessively or hazardously."
Mr Galloway said events such as the Hyde St party showed there were ways the community could minimise harm.
"But I think we need to go back to the principled approach that the Law Commission looked into in the first principles review of alcohol in 2011-12.
"They recommended the phasing out of alcohol sponsorship, marketing and advertising, and I think that is still the most evidence-based measure to drive the biggest change in what is New Zealand’s hazardous and harmful drinking culture."
The patient told the ODT that hospital ED staff were "swamped, stressed and apologetic".
"They were doing as good as they could with the meagre resources they had.
"I think if Dunedin is going to be promoted as a party destination for the rest of the country, then the health system needs to be funded to support this.
"The ED is literally the ambulance at the bottom of the cliff."
Health New Zealand Te Whatu Ora Southern group director of operations Hamish Brown said the hospital had prepared for an influx of patients.
"We expected St Patrick’s Day to be a busy day for the Dunedin Hospital emergency department, and as such, additional support was provided throughout the day as part of our usual response to surges in patient numbers."
There were 154 presentations to the Dunedin Hospital emergency department on March 17, of which 28 were recorded as being related to St Patrick’s Day celebrations, he said.
Of those 154 patients, more than half were discharged within six hours, and 26 did not wait to be seen.
"We have a number of initiatives in Otago-Southland to improve ED wait times and manage demand.
"This includes early assessment, such as taking blood samples or ordering X-rays at an earlier stage, to enable people to move through their care faster.
"Our emergency department staff are doing their very best to see patients as fast as possible and we thank them for their hard work."
