Urgent recruitment needed to avoid health system ‘meltdown’, says top doc

Urgent recruitment needs to be started immediately to avert the Top End’s hospital system entering a fully-fledged meltdown, according to the Australian Salaried Medical Officers’ Federation branch president Dr Thomas Fowles.

URGENT and expensive recruitment needs to be started immediately to avert the Top End’s hospital system entering a fully-fledged meltdown, according to Australian Salaried Medical Officers’ Federation branch president Dr Thomas Fowles.

A looming pay freeze, which will leave nurses and doctors in the NT worse off than interstate colleagues, could also quickly be reversed to keep talent.

Dr Fowles has also urged for more to be done to arrest declining morale within Royal Darwin Hospital.

Urgent recruitment needs to be started immediately to avert the Top End’s hospital system entering a fully-fledged meltdown, according to Australian Salaried Medical Officers’ Federation branch president Dr Thomas Fowles. Picture: Julianne Osborne

Word of the poor work environment in Darwin has scared off interstate medical professionals from considering a sea change to the NT.

“Right now the system (is) failing, and if something was done about a year ago we might have been able to do it in time to fix things,” Dr Fowles said.

“It’s too late for normal processes, so it’s got to be that sort of urgent recruitment.

“I’m talking about the sort of recruitment that normally a health service doesn’t want to do, because it’s so expensive.”

Overstretched healthcare workers were being overburdened by low morale and high caseloads, pushing them to the brink.

Dr Fowles described the situation as a continuous spiral, whereby less staff leads to lower satisfaction which leads to even fewer staff.

“We’ve got a situation where doctors and nurses take their job satisfaction from caring for patients,” Dr Fowles said.

“And the system is so overloaded, that people can’t care for their patients.

“So it needs to be agency nurses. Talk to Serco, and all those other providers, to get the nurses up here for a very short term … six month contracts.”

The reprieve would give NT Health enough time to improve morale and attract nurses and doctors from interstate to relieve pressure on the Royal Darwin Hospital long-term.

Dr Fowles also fears a looming pay freeze, similar to that facing the rest of the public sector, will also drive staff to take up jobs in southern states to be closer to their friends and family.

He said the freeze required urgent review, owing to the “real risk we will lose a huge number of staff”.

“It just adds another push away from Darwin.”

“We’re already pushing away (staff) with the working conditions. I had a colleague who was given a hard time for going to a funeral.”

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Originally published as Urgent recruitment needed to avoid health system ‘meltdown’, says top doc