An 'accident waiting to happen'

Timaru Hospital is an "accident waiting to happen" as it is staffed overnight by just one doctor, who is usually only a few months out of medical school, the junior doctors' union says.

The warning comes after a junior doctor working at night at Tauranga Hospital was criticised over the death of a two-year-old boy in his care from brain damage resulting from an asthma attack.

A Health and Disability Commission report into the death found that if the junior doctor had recognised the severity of the boy's condition earlier, the child was likely to have lived.

Resident Doctors Association national secretary Deborah Powell said the union complained to the South Canterbury District Health Board (SCDHB) in November after hearing that just one house officer was in charge of the hospital overnight.

The house officer was almost always a new resident doctor who had graduated from medical school within the past six months to a year. There were no senior medical staff on call or other doctors in the hospital to assist, she said.

"It is unsafe to have just one person on duty. This situation is an accident waiting to happen," Powell said. "It is of concern for the patients as well as the house officers."

While senior staff might be on call, junior doctors felt they had to manage alone, she said.

All other South Island hospitals of the same size as Timaru Hospital had at least two house officers on duty every night, Powell said.Within the first year of graduating, junior doctors were paid about $25 an hour, compared with $40 an hour in their third year, she said.

SCDHB chief executive Chris Fleming said that between 11pm and 8am, one house surgeon was on duty at Timaru Hospital, and a second was on call.

Senior consultants were contracted to be at the hospital within 10 minutes of a call, he said. Written protocols were in place on when junior doctors should call in senior support.

These arrangement had been in place for years, Fleming said.

The numbers of patients arriving at the emergency department at night were low, but over the past two years had increased, he said.

About 1450 patients arrived at the emergency department every month. "We also recognise that workload is not necessarily about the number of patients but more the type of patients and their needs. "We have acknowledged that it is timely to revisit the issue."

Fleming said the board wrote to the union last month on how to address the issues, but had not received a reply.

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