Patients in the Manawatū are being warned to expect chaos at Palmerston North Hospital amid a severe shortage of specialist doctors.
Palmerston North Hospital is funded for six gastroenterologists. As of two weeks ago, there were none left following the departure of Dr James Irwin.
Irwin told a packed public meeting last night he resigned in the hopes the fallout would force change.
“I feel guilty that I’ve resigned for the patients and also for the nurses that are left behind on the service, but ultimately I feel that the best way to get change was to resign,” Irwin said.
During the meeting, Health NZ clinical executive national director Dr Richard Sullivan said it was doing everything it could to fill the gaps in the gastroenterology workforce.
“We have unacceptable waitlists, we know that. We have over 206,000 people waiting to be seen across the system,” he said.
However, the shortage wasn’t just a Palmerston North issue, he said. Last year, Hawke’s Bay lost all five of their gastroenterology doctors.
“Our gastroenterologists don’t train in provincial centres, they train in the big centres, and they don’t get exposed so the chances of keeping these people locally is hard.”
One solution proposed to address the ongoing issue was shoulder-tapping newly qualified doctors.
“There’s a national gastroenterology Whatsapp group, so we’re going to try and link into that to say, ‘Hey look we need help’,” Sullivan said.
Health NZ ‘had every opportunity to intervene’
The Association of Salaried Medical Specialists’ executive director Sarah Dalton says the problem didn’t happen overnight.
“Health NZ has had every opportunity to intervene, to recruit, to put things in place, and to be upfront about the issue and they tend not to do so,” she said.
Health NZ says they’ve had 20 applicants apply for roles in the department and a specialist replacing Irwin will start in September.
In the meantime, there will be locums and visiting specialists to cover the load.
Patient Voice Aotearoa chairman Malcom Mulholland said after the meeting he was still unsure what the main issue was.
“It’s still difficult to ascertain what the main problem is. Is it a wage issue, we’re simply not offering doctors enough to come and work in provincial New Zealand? Or is it an environment issue, are they not attracted to come here because of the work conditions that they’re finding themselves to be in?”
In December 2024, 800 patients received a letter from Health NZ saying they could not give a date for surveillance colonoscopies due to increasing demand. The letter ended by saying recipients would be updated by May 2025.
“Nobody has received any update since this letter was sent in December 2024,” Mulholland said.
When asked about the lack of communication, Sullivan apologised, saying it was “not good enough”.
“We’ve got to get better at that and get better with communicating with our communities about when we’ve got these challenges,” Sullivan said.