Canterbury survey results sign of senior doctor shortages

23 August 2018

“A survey of senior doctor staffing at Canterbury District Health Board highlights once again the extent to which hospitals are working short-handed,” says Ian Powell, Executive Director of the Association of Salaried Medical Specialists (ASMS).

“Hospitals are doing the best they can to deal with the consequences of years of neglect of the public health system, but it’s very challenging for the medical workforce to continually provide high quality health care when they are under such pressure.”

ASMS surveyed Canterbury DHB clinical leaders with responsibility for specialty services at the end of last year, seeking their assessment of the adequacy of senior medical officer (SMO) staffing levels in their respective departments.

The survey is part of an ongoing study of SMO staffing levels in DHBs, and is available online at https://www.asms.org.nz/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/Staffing-survey-Canterbury-DHB_169863.2.pdf.

Key findings include:
• Of the 55 heads of departments contacted for participation in this research, 28 responded (51%), representing about 32% (152.5 FTE) of the SMO FTE workforce at Canterbury DHB.
• 19 HoDs (68% of respondents) indicated they had inadequate FTE SMOs for their services at the time of the survey.
• Clinical leaders estimated they needed 37.6 more FTEs – or 24.7% of the current SMO staffing allocations in their departments – to provide safe, quality and timely health care.
• Despite the estimated 37.6 FTE staffing shortfall, there were only 8 FTE vacancies at the time of the survey.
• From the 28 HoD responses, 39% indicated their SMO staff are ‘never’ or ‘rarely’ able to access the recommended level of non-clinical time (30% of hours worked) to undertake duties such as quality assurance activities, supervision and mentoring, and education and training, as well as their own ongoing professional development and continuing medical education. 35% said non-clinical time was accessible ‘sometimes’ and 27% said ‘often’ or ‘always’.
• Half of HoDs (50%) felt their SMO staff had insufficient time for training and education duties.
• On average, 41% believed there was inadequate internal SMO backup cover for short-term sick leave, annual leave, continuing medical education leave or for covering training and mentoring duties while staff were away.
• 62% responded that there was inadequate access to locums or additional staff to cover for long-term leave.
• In an overall assessment of whether the current staffing level was sufficient for full use of appropriate leave taking as well as non-clinical time and training responsibilities, 77% of HoDs responded ‘no’.
• Nearly a third of respondents (31%) believed their SMO staff did not have enough time to spend with patients and their families to provide good quality patient-centred care.

Mr Powell says data from the Organisation of Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) show New Zealand has one of the lowest number of specialists per head of population out of 32 countries.

“Senior doctor shortages have been well documented by ASMS but this Canterbury survey, along with others we have done at various DHBs, provides a very specific snapshot of what a shortage looks like at a point in time.

“Coping with shortages has become the norm for public hospital specialists but as this survey indicates, clinical leaders consider the senior doctors in their teams do not have enough time to spend with patients or to equip themselves with further professional development, training or education.”

ENDS

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