Recruitment major problem for hospital

The Southern District Health Board is having chronic problems recruiting new staff, especially nurses.

Staff shortages have already affected services and some surgeries have been postponed due to lack of staff, an SDHB hospital advisory committee meeting was told yesterday.

"The one I am losing the most sleep about is nursing vacancies," SDHB chief executive Chris Fleming said.

"As an example, there are 750 nursing vacancies in aged residential care at the moment, nationally, and we have got beds closed in our region because of a lack of aged residential care nurses.

"We have got surgical beds closed today because of staff shortages in Dunedin Hospital, and the the traditional supply chain is not working ... and lo and behold, a number of our new recruits are coming from aged residential care."

All DHBs are required to hire extra nurses to meet safe staffing arrangements agreed with the nurse’s union to settle their collective contract dispute three years ago.

That has made nurses an ever scarcer commodity, as has competition from Australia.

"We are currently losing a lot of new nurses to Australia, where they start on $25,000 more than where they start on in New Zealand," board member Lyndell Kelly said.

The picture was not entirely bleak, as specialist services director Patrick Ng said the SDHB had recently had a little more success recruiting senior medical officers (SMO) than it had historically.

"For example roles like neonatology, where we have struggled to recruit staff in to, we’ve managed to fill all three roles now."

Hiring an SMO took an average of six months and many were recruited from overseas, which necessitated a time-consuming Medical Council approval process.

"The changes and fluidity around immigration processes has added further complexity, uncertainty and delays, as has the current managed isolation process," Mr Ng said.

The imminent campaign to recruit up to 16 oncology staff, if successful, could be a potential template for future drives to hire clinicians, he said.

mike.houlahan@odt.co.nz