Surgeon misplaced screw in patient’s spine, eventually she gave up on NZ's health system

An investigation by 1News reporter Thomas Mead details a woman’s descent into pain, after a surgery went wrong at a Christchurch private hospital.

Staring at the X-ray, Jacoba Vaessler was in disbelief.

The Christchurch woman had suspected something was wrong ever since she woke up from surgery, the day before. Her leg felt different, she said. The pain was “horrible”.

She would later come to describe the feeling as “type of fire”. Imagine, she would say, what it would feel like if someone poured fuel on your leg and set it alight. Imagine someone began electrocuting your heel, the pulse coming every five seconds.

Watch the full investigation on TVNZ+

In those early days in hospital, her first clue to the cause arrived in black and white.

“Luckily I could persuade the nurse and I said to her, ‘Can I quickly have a look at that X-ray?’,” Vaessler said. “I had a look and I was like, ‘oh wow’.

“That screw is totally in the wrong place.”

Vaessler’s story – bridging three years, with effects still felt today – raises serious questions about what happens when surgery goes wrong in New Zealand.

A 1News investigation, conducted over months, can bring the details of her case to light for the first time, through medical records, letters and other official documentation.

Those records show Vaessler, 48, was injured on the operating table at St George’s private hospital in November 2023, when Christchurch neurosurgeon Dr Nicholas Finnis misplaced a screw in her spine. The surgery also caused injuries to her nerves.

The documents reveal Vaessler was unable to get surgery in New Zealand, including through the public system. She arrived at Christchurch Hospital in crisis in October 2025, but surgeons there offered non-surgical options instead of taking her back to theatre.

In the end Vaessler gave up on our health system entirely. She flew to a private hospital in Australia for revision surgery late last year and continues to travel back and forth for care.

In documents and responses, the New Zealand surgeons have provided a different version of events to those that Vaessler puts forward.

In a letter sent to a complaint assessor, Dr Finnis has apologised for what Vaessler experienced in his operation. But he has also argued the significance of the misplaced screw has been “misinterpreted”.

Health New Zealand, meanwhile, maintains it did not refuse to treat Vaessler, saying it provided “extensive clinical assessment and investigation” to her.

However, the private specialist Vaessler uses in Australia believes the New Zealand system has let her down.

Her treatment is now handled by Dr Tim Steel, a consultant neurosurgeon at St Vincent’s Private Hospital in Sydney.

He has said he’s never seen a patient in such severe pain, describing her situation as “disturbing”.

“I can’t help shake the feeling that if she hadn't come over here, she'd still be in agony,” he said.

Vaessler is more practised at carrying out surgeries than receiving them as she is a trained vet surgeon. The job has given her years of experience in the treatment of animals, and she often dons a surgical kit to carry out operations herself.

But the tables turned in 2017 when she fell on ice and injured her spine. The following year, she was the one lying on the operating table for a surgery.

The first operation went to plan, with proper fusion and bone growth following afterward. She had some ongoing nerve pain, including symptoms in her lower legs, but says things were manageable until an incident years later.

In February 2023, she picked up something heavy.

“As soon as I twisted and turned, I heard the snap,” she said.

“I could feel it, just running down my leg, and I knew there was something really, really wrong.”

Re-injured, Vaessler went back to theatre for a second time, in November 2023, to have an implant installed in her lower spine by Christchurch neurosurgeon Dr Nicholas Finnis, of St George’s private hospital.

This time, the procedure did not go to plan. Vaessler claims she woke up in severe pain.

“On my heel it felt like the nerve kept on pulsing through. That sharp shocking pain,” she said.

“Not only in my back where they did the surgery but also my leg was on fire.”

There is dispute about exactly how much pain she was in.

In documents, the operating surgeon, Dr Finnis, has noted it was recorded that Vaessler was “bright in mood” after surgery, with her pain put at a 4 out of 5.

He said she described some numbness, but he believed that was common and thought it would resolve over time.

“He said, ‘no, no, it will be fine, you just need to get up. As soon as you get up and start walking you will be fine’,” Vaessler recalled.

“And I said, ‘No, there's something really wrong. Can we do an X-ray?’ So he sent me off to an X-ray that day.”

Vaessler has experience with X-rays through her job as a vet surgeon.

What she saw was later confirmed by a radiologist, who wrote a screw had been “malpositioned”. It was protruding through the endplate into the space between her vertebrae.

Dr Finnis felt her pain was not connected to the screw and any impact would be marginal, believing the wider implant was likely to be stable.

But in the days, weeks and months that followed, Vaessler found herself in agony.

The record shows that she repeatedly asked Dr Finnis for help in emails, phone calls and meetings.

On one occasion, she told him she had spent the night in the emergency department at Christchurch Hospital.

“Nauseous from pain”, she wrote. “Feels like my left leg is dying off.”

Dr Finnis would not respond to a request for comment for this story, despite Vaessler sending him a privacy waiver giving permission to discuss her care.

When sent a detailed list of questions, he responded through a lawyer, who said it would be “both unprofessional and quite unethical” for the neurosurgeon to discuss the case in the media.

However 1News has obtained a 44-page response Dr Finnis sent to the Health and Disability Commissioner in March 2025, following a complaint laid by Vaessler.

In it, he outlines his views on what happened and describes his “deep regret” at the problems Vaessler suffered.

“I am sorry that my operation has led to problems for her,” he wrote. “I do believe that I could have helped her with this operation and this was my sincere intention.”

At the same time, the surgeon maintained that her pain was not linked to the misplaced screw, saying it “would not cause further problems with back pain in the future”.

He also argued that while the trajectory was “not planned”, it is common for these screws to be placed on an angle through the endplate.

“The misplaced screw has been a focus of attention and its significance misinterpreted,” he wrote.

However, records show that he does accept the surgery caused a small fracture to the endplate of Vaessler’s vertebra.

He supported a treatment injury claim to ACC on that basis, which was later accepted.

“I think he realised that I can see [it] and I can read the reports and I can read the X-rays and the MRIs,” Vaessler said.

“So I sort of pushed him a little bit to sign off that he made a mistake. He recognised he made a mistake. He signed it off.”

As Vaessler continued to suffer, the surgeon and patient began to discuss potential revision surgery.

Documents show that at first Dr Finnis offered Vaessler various pain management options and made referrals to investigate the cause of her pain.

He came to the view that further revision surgery was not required for the misplaced screw, believing it had still achieved good fixation. He took a second opinion from another surgeon, who supported that approach.

But despite his views, Dr Finnis was willing to support another surgery, if Vaessler wanted one.

He would not go forward with this, however, unless he was paid. His office sent Vaessler an invoice for $46,795, so she could explore private insurance.

His office manager then sent Vaessler an email, saying that options were “very limited” unless funding was provided by either ACC or private insurance.

“The only thing we can suggest is that you increase any medications you are taking to assist with your pain levels until approval is given,” she wrote.

The approach surprised the patient.

“If it's this major mistake in private that you've made, wouldn't you just fix it?,” Vaessler said later.

It also shocked Dr Tim Steel in Australia, who has since taken over Vaessler’s care.

He thought charging was not "quite ethical”.

“I think in my experience, which is now fairly extensive, no surgeon would ever charge a patient for a revision surgery for a complication that occurred during the surgery,” he said.

“Certainly here in Australia, we what we call ‘no gap’ all the patients, which means it's part of the whole treatment process. There's no reason to come back, asking for more money out of pocket from the patient.”

Surgeons do sometimes waive their fees in New Zealand, but it depends on the situation.

1News approached Andrea Pettett of the New Zealand Orthopaedic Association to ask what practices are locally.

“There is no protocol for charging for revision fees,” she said. “There can be a range of reasons why revision surgery is required, and the surgeon will determine whether or not they believe a fee is necessary.”

Vaessler decided not to pay privately for the operation. At that stage, ACC funding was not an option her as claim was still under consideration.

When asked about his charging practices, Dr Finnis did not respond.

Documents show that as time went on, an even deeper problem was uncovered.

Dr Finnis’ operation had also left Vaessler with nerve injuries.

He made various referrals to other experts and supported a second treatment injury claim to ACC to accept the wider diagnosis.

After consideration ACC formally accepted the surgery had caused a left sympathetic plexus injury, a left femoral nerve injury and a left lateral cutaneous nerve/genitofemoral nerve injury, as well as the facture to her vertebral endplate.

The nerve conditions can be incredibly painful.

As the months passed, Vaessler lost faith in Dr Finnis and at the end of 2024 sent a complaint to the Health and Disability Commissioner about his practices.

In a letter responding to the assessor, Dr Finnis expanded at length on steps he took to offer pain management, identify issues and make referrals to others to help with her care.

“I saw Dr Vaessler on numerous occasions, sometimes urgently, and provided her advice which I felt was suitable. I was always available to see her at any time,” he said.

“I have tried to manage her the best I can through very difficult times.”

However Vaessler maintains he let her down.

“Wouldn't you just say, ‘look I made a huge mistake’. ‘Let's see if we can fix this for you?’,” she said.

The complaint remains with the HDC with no outcome yet provided.

In October 2025, the situation reached crisis point.

Vaessler had by now been living in pain for two years. One day, she said, she woke up and found that she could not move her legs.

Soon she was at Christchurch Hospital.

“I couldn't sit,” she said. “I went and I laid on the floor in the emergency department. People were walking over me.”

Her medical file shows staff recorded her pain as at “10/10”. She needed two people to help her mobilise, on crutches.

Within three days, an issue was flagged on an MRI scan.

In the radiologist’s interpretation, it was described as: "left L4 extraforaminal nerve root passes close to the XLIF with apparent flattening and trajectory change”.

Or in other words, a nerve root was running close to the implant in her spine and there were signs of flattening.

The neurosurgery department also wrote that the nerve appeared “distorted and scarred".

By now, Vaessler had started talking to Dr Steel in Australia after a search online. He was concerned the nerve had become physically stuck to the implant and recommended urgent surgery.

“She was at the top level of nerve pain. That sort of nerve pain is continuous, unrelenting agony,” he told 1News in an interview.

“I said, ‘what we need to do is to go and explore the nerve’.”

At Christchurch Hospital, Vaessler was told that was not an option. Staff wanted to use non-surgical options instead, including a spinal cord stimulation treatment.

When Vaessler kept pushing for surgery, the neurosurgery department discharged her.

“All they would do is up my morphine, up my fentanyl,” Vaessler said. “One after the other… Orthopaedics, ‘no, we won't see you’. Pain specialist, ‘no, we won't see you’.”

Her worries overwhelming her, everything “went black”.

“You basically lose everything,” she said. “I could not stay in hospital, I couldn't stay there longer. They wheeled me out with a wheelchair, pushed me into my husband's car and no plan, left me.”

While ACC had accepted her treatment injury claims, she could not access cover without support from a New Zealand clinician. The same was true of her private insurance. By now, she also did not want to return to Dr Finnis for his opinion.

Desperate, Vaessler wrote to Health Minister Simeon Brown claiming she had been refused treatment by the New Zealand health system.

The Minster referred her case to Health New Zealand for review. At the end of 2025, a response came back from a senior manager confirming that surgery would not be provided.

The CT and MRI imaging did “not support surgical intervention at this time”, wrote Health New Zealand’s Group Director of Operations Canterbury, Hamish Brown.

Referring to the most recent specialist letter on her file, he noted the clinical opinion was that “further spinal surgery is not currently recommended”, and that “the consultant expressed concern about the necessity of surgery and advised that non-surgical management options remain preferrable and are accessible within New Zealand”.

He added: “You were discharged from neurosurgery as your focus remained on pursuing surgical options, despite recommendations to explore non-surgical pathways.”

In the end, Vaessler decided to leave the New Zealand health system behind.

In November 2025, she flew to Dr Steel for revision at St Vincent’s Private Hospital in Sydney. The operation cost more than $60,000, she said, paid out of pocket.

Surgery was arranged urgently, within a day of her arriving, her fears soon borne out in theatre.

“I found significant tethering and material compressing the L4 and the L5 nerve roots as they joined, lateral to the disc, right over where the implant was,” Dr Steel said.

It was the very thing the Australian specialist had been concerned about. Bulky material on the implant had pushed onto where the nerves were coming across, he said. This had compressed the nerve, causing excruciating pain.

Vaessler says she noticed the difference as soon as she came out of surgery.

“I woke up and I was like, I thought I was in heaven,” she said.

For its part, Health New Zealand maintains it did not deny treatment to Vaessler.

It would not be interviewed for this story but sent a statement from Hamish Brown in Canterbury.

He said Vaessler underwent “extensive clinical assessment and investigation".

“Her case was considered by clinicians with expertise in spinal conditions,” he said. “Following specialist review, surgery was not considered the most appropriate treatment option at that stage”.

But Health New Zealand did not respond to specific questions about the MRI imaging and would not say how surgeons here came to a different conclusion to Dr Steel in Australia, about the need for surgery.

Other than to say, it is “not uncommon in complex spinal cases for specialists to hold differing views about the appropriateness, timing and potential benefits of surgery”.

For his part, Dr Steel says he finds it disturbing that no surgery was offered.

“After surgery it is not uncommon for spine surgery patients to have some symptoms, but they usually progressively improve,” he said.

“Here we had a situation where there was a new symptom that was severe. The descriptions that she gave to me and appear to be the case from all of the records was that she was essentially in agony.”

He argues the pain itself was an indication for surgery.

“The fact that she didn't improve, she was allowed to be left for two years after the surgery, I think that's where the letting down has occurred,” he said.

Health New Zealand said it acknowledges the pain and distress Vaessler experienced but stands by its position.

“Subsequent clinicians reaching a different conclusion does not mean the assessments undertaken by Christchurch Hospital clinicians were inappropriate,” Hamish Brown said.

Vaessler, meanwhile, says she has given up hope of being helped by the New Zealand health system.

She has some ongoing pain from her condition and continues to fly to and from Australia for treatment regularly, now sourcing her medication from there too.

“I think sometimes we give up hope quickly, we sit in a small country, and we don't always have access to the best medical care,” she said.

“I really do think New Zealand’s health system needs to change.”

Her final message for other patients is a sombre one. “If you do want a second opinion, independent review, I would go overseas.”

Watch Thomas Meads' full investigation on TVNZ+ now