A senior Palmerston North Hospital doctor is fed up with the Government not listening to calls for help as the city's hospital continues to struggle with demand.
Palmerston North Hospital Emergency Department Clinical Head Dr David Prisk has described the demand as overwhelming and told AM on Tuesday patients are waiting up to 60 hours for a hospital bed, which he described as "inhumane".
An evaluation by Dr Prisk reveals from late July to early October more than 130 shifts were critically short of junior doctors with six nights having no junior doctors.
The hospital claims the Government has been made aware of the issue several times - with Dr Prisk writing a letter to former Minister of Health Andrew Little last year.
But, Dr Prisk told AM nothing changed after that letter last year.
"We have a facility that is too small for the patient population that we are servicing. We don't have enough staff and we have overwhelming demand," he said.
Dr Prisk said the hospital sees three times the number of patients the building is designed to handle.
In the letter written to Little, Dr. Prisk said 14 patients each spent more than 24 hours sitting in the waiting room for a hospital bed.
He told AM co-host Laura Tupou this is a common occurrence and can even extend much longer than 24 hours.
"The wait for inpatient beds is simply unreasonable. It's inhumane and people wait in the waiting room to be seen by a doctor in the ED (Emergency Department) and then once they're referred for admission, they wait for 20, 30 and sometimes up to 60 hours for an inpatient bed," he said.
Dr Prisk told AM the hospital during the winter was short 11 junior doctors when they're supposed to have 24 and five senior doctors when they're meant to have 11.
He said a big reason why the industry is struggling to attract staff is because they can't compete with the international market.
"Look, honestly, it's difficult to compete with Australia. We also are facing a difficult environment in which we work and we've had early resignations amongst our junior medical staff," he said.
"We've had some unexpected resignations amongst our senior medical staff and our senior medical staff are cutting their hours because of burnout."
He told AM Australia is offering better pay and hospitals, especially in the regions, are "simply better resourced".
All of this means there is a risk to patient safety.
"We work very, very hard to prioritise the sickest patients and to see them as quickly as possible. But there is a risk. It's at times a very difficult, dangerous place to work and it can be a very difficult, dangerous place to be a patient," Dr Prisk warns.
Te Whatu Ora interim chief medical officer Dr Nick Baker told AM, following Dr Prisk's interview, that the entire industry is facing the challenges that Palmerston North Hospital is experiencing.
When asked what help Te Whatu Ora can provide to Dr Prisk, Dr Baker said it's about taking a whole system approach.
"What can we do to make sure that people keep the emergency department for emergencies and that's actually been a pretty successful initiative across the motu," he said.
"Fewer people in the least needy category are presenting... and also we always need to look at what we can do for primary care to increase people's access to after-hours, medical services, ambulances, community services and general practice."
Dr Baker said when Te Whatu Ora sees vacancies in rosters, they try to shift people around the country to fill the gaps.
"But sadly, even with that major capacity, so many other places are very short-staffed," he said.
Dr Baker warns it'll take over a year to get close to filling all the gaps around the country.
"The other factor at the moment is this particular quarter of the year is typically our worst for junior doctor staffing and some of that relates to the normal flux of doctors between the Northern Hemisphere and the Southern Hemisphere. That a group of doctors, as Dr Fisk has illustrated, have actually resigned and gone north," he said.
"There will be a group coming south as the Northern Hemisphere summer finishes. So there is a normal seasonal trend and unfortunately, that trend overlaps with when we are at our busiest in terms of winter ills."
Watch the full interview with Dr David Prisk and Dr Nick Baker in the video above.
