



Ana Shaw, a straight-talking South African, is a tough lady but she felt bullied at Tauranga Hospital and it left her crushed. She takes out her phone and plays a video of her grandson blowing her a kiss. It’s her family that keeps her going. Without them she might be dead.

“[I was] crumbling, going home crying, thinking can I just overdose on something? Where’s the highest bridge to jump off? How do I leave my son in a foreign country without a mother?”

Shaw has 24 years' clinical experience. She trained in South Africa and immigrated to New Zealand on the skills shortage list.

In August 2010, Shaw started work at Tauranga Hospital. Four years later, she was fired.

The problems started shortly after she arrived at the hospital. She remembers when an inspiring quote was posted on the staff room wall: “Everybody needs encouragement; you can speak a word that changes someone’s life!”

“Some of the staff had a field day adding words to it,” says Shaw. “I saw it and ignored it. One of the girls who didn’t like me asked me if I’d seen it, then sniggered and walked off.”

Words like ‘lesbian’ and ‘average’ were scrawled over the poster. Someone had circled ‘needs encouragement’ and wrote ‘fired’ in a highlighter, Shaw says.

She tried not to let it bother her but she was hurt. “I went home to my friends and poured my heart out. I couldn't believe it,” she says.

Shaw took the poster to management suspecting they’d have a word to staff, but nothing was done, she says. “Bullying is worldwide, you can’t blame New Zealand for this. But I’d never dealt with it in this degree of maliciousness.”

Shaw continued to feel bullied. It was ongoing, sometimes subtle, and slowly eroded her confidence. She says a colleague called her a “black lady”, another said she was an "African wildebeest", and a third told her to go back to South Africa. Once, a colleague complained in front of management that she “walked too fast, spoke too fast, and worked too fast”.

One staff member repeatedly tampered with her patient notes and management blocked her learning opportunities, says Shaw. She felt belittled, demeaned and ignored. Once, she says, the aggression was so obvious that a patient stood up for her.

“No matter how many times I raised bullying issues, no matter what I raised, nothing was ever actioned,” says Shaw.

She raised her complaints with her union. Emails from her union, Apex, show they suggested she keep detailed records of incidents. Shaw says she didn’t receive the support she hoped for.

At one stage, Shaw emailed the DHB and asked for mediation with a coworker she felt treated her badly. The email response from HR says it “doesn’t get involved in interpersonal conflict”. In 2013, HR also told Shaw not to copy them into emails after she raised a concern that “relevant professional information” was being kept from her by a manager.

“My mental health declined drastically,” says Shaw.

She recalls how in 2011 the DHB paid a contractor to run an anti-bullying programme called 'Taking The Bully By The Horns' after its annual report identified bullying as a concern. The DHB said the programme was “favourably received”. Shaw calls it a “waste of time”.

The DHB is currently running another programme, called “Creating our Culture”, aimed, in part, at dealing with what CEO Helen Mason calls “inappropriate behaviour”.

“We have received a lot of very positive feedback about the programme, from staff, our employee union partners, and our patients, and are proud of what it has achieved to date,” she says.

Shaw remembers when her situation at work took a turn for the worse. In 2014, there had been a mix up with a reporting process that involved vital patient information. After one patient wasn’t called back despite having serious health problems, Shaw felt it was important to raise the issue with the team.

She sent an email to a manager and six colleagues. In it, she described the problem and asked everyone to “work together and not against each other” for the well-being of patients.

Ana Shaw's email which was subject to a four-month investigation. Ana Shaw's email which was subject to a four-month investigation.

“I’m very straightforward and I have learnt that the culture here is very different.” But other than being to the point, Shaw doesn't see anything wrong with the email.

Nine minutes after she pushed send, the manager responded and included her colleagues. “Do not address my staff in this manner,” she wrote.

It was a public dressing down. Shaw felt frustrated but, by now, she was used to feeling this. Except this time was different; the manager launched a formal investigation into Shaw’s email.

“I was devastated. I had been complaining about multiple incidents of bullying and harassment over several years and nothing had been done. Then I sent out an email and they carried out a full-blown investigation.”

After a four-month investigation, the manager produced a 50-page report in which she concluded that Shaw’s 11-line email breached DHB policy and recommended she be disciplined.

The DHB's report into Shaw's email. The DHB's report into Shaw's email.

“I felt they were trying to put a mark against my name, basically to shut me up. I thought, how could they discipline me on my email and yet ignore all my grievances?”

Shaw had had enough. She hired an employment advocate who lodged a personal grievance on her behalf with the DHB in late 2014.

Shaw was put on “special leave” and asked to produce evidence of the bullying. She spent weeks compiling documents, in the hospital library, which she felt proved she was being mistreated: the poster with hurtful words; emails from management to show her career development was being obstructed; messages from HR.

She handed in 150 pages to the DHB. Five days later, she was told she was being investigated for “breaching patient confidentiality”.

Shaw had included photocopies of patient reports in her evidence because she felt the tampering with her notes was evidence of mistreatment. She insists the patient records never left the hospital grounds. She says they never went to anyone else other than the DHB. She redacted the names with black marker but some patient details became visible when she photocopied them.

“I was shocked that I could be in trouble for providing information confidentially when I was asked by the DHB to do so,” she says.

Her employment advocate argued her case, telling the DHB it was their understanding that the information provided had not breached patient confidentiality as it had only gone to another employee within the organisation. But, in March 2015, she was fired.

“This is mental torture. I had never had any warnings or disciplinary marks against my professional conduct in 32 years. What have I done to deserve this?”

Shaw was left without a job and desperately needed an income to support herself and her son. She applied for more than 50 positions. She tried for a job at a supermarket but was turned down because of her dismissal from the DHB, she says.

Five months after she was fired, she got a job as a retail assistant. The drop in income meant she had to move out of her rental and in with friends. Her mental health began to slide and she was diagnosed with depression, which she had never experienced before. She’s been on and off medication since 2016.

Shaw decided to take a bullying case to the Employment Relations Authority (ERA) but her evidence was deemed inadmissible as the ERA weren’t satisfied that she raised the issues with her employer within a 90-day period. She’s still waiting to have a separate case – unfair dismissal – heard by the ERA.

The DHB says it won't comment on Shaw's case while it is before the ERA, but it did say it "believes these historic incidents were investigated and appropriate actions taken at the time".

“I know of deaths at the DHB. If we don’t speak up for them, then who will?” says Shaw.

“I won't drop the case because I have to clear my name, it’s for integrity and for people to be accountable.”