By Angus Thomson and Kate Aubusson
Foreign doctors fast-tracked to treat patients in Australia are being sold the dream of living near Sydney’s Opera House or the “world-famous” Byron Bay as the NSW government scrambles to plug holes in the mental health system caused by a mass resignation of more than half of the state’s public hospital psychiatrists.
At least 198 of NSW’s 295 staff specialist psychiatrists had submitted resignation letters by Saturday afternoon, an extraordinary move that will leave public hospitals with a skeleton workforce of psychiatrists from January.
Foreign doctors are being sold the dream of living near the Sydney Opera House or at Byron Bay as the state government desperately tries to fill hospital psychiatrist roles. Credit: Michael Howard
Minister for Mental Health Rose Jackson said the government was exploring every option to ease impact on patients, including finding staff from overseas “to help plug any gaps”.
“This has always been part of our contingency planning,” she said. “We need to be ready to ensure services and vital mental health support are not impacted by this action.”
Job listings sent to psychiatrists last week advertised dozens of locum psychiatry positions with salaries ranging from $262,376 to $354,479.
One agency said NSW Health was offering increased “crisis” rates of up to $3050 a day as well as accommodation and travel allowances to locum psychiatrists willing to fill the vacancies from mid-January. Another said they were about to see an “influx” of NSW psychiatry roles from January onwards.
In another listing, international locum agency Global Medics spruiked the federal government’s new fast-track pathway, which will open to psychiatrists trained in the United Kingdom from Monday.
Seven roles spanning adult, adolescent, child and infant psychiatry services were advertised in Sydney Local Health District, where 45 psychiatrists have already tendered their resignations.
The listing described the jobs as being in the heart of a city “surrounded by beaches, with the Opera House on your doorstep”.
The agency also advertised six roles in the Illawarra, “a sought-after coastal location with easy access to Sydney”, and eight roles in northern NSW, “home to some of the most beautiful coastline and world-famous Byron Bay”.
Dr Ian Korbel, a consultant forensic psychiatrist at Justice Health, said NSW would face the same difficulty attracting fast-tracked foreign doctors that it faced retaining its existing staff.
“Why would they come to NSW when they could go interstate and get paid more while paying less for their accommodation?” he said. “It doesn’t address the substantive issue, which is that we need locally trained psychiatrists who know the local conditions … and are paid competitively.”
Number of psychiatrist resignations submitted, by health district:
- Sydney: 45
- North Sydney: 32
- Justice Health: 26
- South East Sydney: 22
- Western Sydney: 12
- Hunter New England: 10
- St Vincent’s: 8
- Northern NSW: 6
- Illawarra Shoalhaven: 5
- Sydney Children’s Hospital Network: 5
- South West Sydney: 4
Psychiatrists, who are already covering for around 150 unfilled positions across the state, were outraged when the state government proposed a six-month productivity pilot to find savings that could fund a higher wage offer.
Western Sydney child and adolescent psychiatrist Dr James Lawler, whose patients include children who are self-harming or suicidal, have bipolar or psychosis, drug use or have escaped domestic violence, said half of the psychiatrists in his service had already resigned this year to work in the private system.
“There seems no urgency on behalf of NSW Health to do anything about these issues,” Lawler said.
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