Specialists call for more senior doctors to cope with demand

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Hospital specialists call for more senior doctors to cope with demand

“Hospital specialists surveyed about the staffing of their departments are telling us loud and clear they need more senior doctors on the clinical front line,” says Ian Powell, Executive Director of the Association of Salaried Medical Specialists (ASMS).

“We’re consistently getting the message that our public hospitals are shorthanded when it comes to having enough specialists to treat the demand that’s in the community,” says Mr Powell.

The ASMS surveyed members employed by district health boards (DHBs) between 14 May and 6 June, and published in the latest issue of the ASMS magazine The Specialist.

The ASMS surveyed members at district health boards (DHBs) between 14 May and 6 June, asking various questions about SMO staffing, and received 637 replies from 384 different departments.

The results are reported in the latest issue of the ASMS magazine The Specialist, available at http://www.asms.org.nz/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/Specialist-Sep-2014-Issue-100.pdf.

Key findings include:

• 78% of respondents said their departments needed more staff – 49% needed one or two more FTE, 16% needed three or four, 9% needed between five and nine, and 4% said they needed more than 10 more FTE in their department. Meanwhile, 21% said the FTE in their department didn’t need to change and 1% said they needed fewer FTE.

• But while nearly 80% said their departments could do with more specialists, just 29% of respondents said their service or department was recruiting. Many respondents commented that their DHBs appeared to have a hiring freeze in place, or were likely to delay filling vacancies or cancel funding.

• Roughly a third (35%) of specialists said it was hard to fill vacancies in their departments or services. Where there was known to be a suitably qualified candidate available, such as a recently qualified senior doctor in the relevant speciality, the failure to employ this person was viewed as a lost opportunity for the DHB and a source of great frustration for other specialists.

• Generally speaking, New Zealand-trained doctors are taking up positions in large city hospitals while medium size and smaller hospitals in the provinces and regions appear to be relying more on recruiting overseas-trained doctors. For example, members at the three Auckland DHBs say their latest service or departmental vacancies were filled by New Zealand-trained recruits while survey respondents at Tairawhiti, Whanganui, West Coast and MidCentral DHBs have filled positions with overseas-trained recruits.

“These findings shed new light on recruitment within DHBs and require further analysis to understand the implications,” says Mr Powell. “What is particularly illuminating, however, are some of the comments that emerged during the survey, which reflect concern at the inadequate level of specialist staffing in New Zealand.”

Comments made by specialists during the survey include:

“It has been very hard in recent years as all our trainees went to work in Auckland and our last four consultants (specialists) have been from USA and UK.”

“Each time a doctor has resigned, this position has not been reallocated and we have lost the funding.”

“We have service growth of 6% per year but have been told we will not receive any growth in medical or nursing FTE to deal with this. We have been in this position for I think at least three years.”

“We had a very good trainee looking for FTE. With nothing available here despite our need she took a job in Brisbane instead, so is lost to the New Zealand system.”

“We need more SMOs. We currently cannot cope with the workload.”

ENDS

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