Hospitals short of cancer doctors

A cancer crisis is looming for adult patients after four specialists stepped down within months of each other, leaving hospitals scrambling to replace them.

Waiting times at Wellington Hospital have already increased and cancer patients may end up having to travel for treatment if vacancies left by senior cancer doctors remain unfilled, the Cancer Society and a senior oncologist have warned.

Wellington oncologist Peter Dady resigned in the middle of last year after going on extended leave, while two long-serving cancer doctors will leave Christchurch Hospital at the end of March to go into private practice.

Another senior position has been vacant at Palmerston North Hospital since early last year and a locum hired to make up the shortfall has just resigned.

The Dominion Post understands that a second senior cancer doctor at Palmerston North hospital is also set to resign.

Three newly trained oncologists have been appointed to replace the outgoing Christchurch specialists, but Capital and Coast District Health Board has still not found a new oncologist, six months after Dr Dady left. Dr Dady could not be contacted and the board did not say why he had resigned.

Anne O'Donnell, clinical leader of Wellington Hospital's medical oncology department, said patients were already feeling the effects of an understaffed department.

"While the existing staff have worked very hard to try to sustain the same level of service to patients, the waiting time to be seen by a specialist has unavoidably increased."

Capital and Coast and MidCentral district health boards did not respond to questions about what contingency plans were available if replacement specialists were not found soon.

Earlier this year, Wellington's child cancer unit was downgraded after Capital and Coast was unable to recruit permanent paediatric oncologists. Children are being sent to Christchurch and Auckland for treatment.

Cancer Society chief executive Dalton Kelly said that, if hospitals took too long to find replacement oncologists, adult cancer services could face the same predicament. "Sending people away to other centres or even to Australia is one alternative. Bringing oncologists up [from other hospitals] on a clinic basis is another."

District health boards might also have to fund private treatment for patients who had to wait too long. "Those sorts of options are available – they're just not very good."

About 18,000 Kiwis are diagnosed with cancer each year, with only about 60 oncologists working across the country.

Chris Atkinson, one of the departing Christchurch oncologists, said cancer services in Wellington and Palmerston North were struggling and those in Dunedin and Christchurch were "just coping".

"Virtually everyone is working too hard to accommodate greater complexity and higher patient numbers." Six months was "far too long" for a vacancy in the capital to go unfilled, he said.

If a replacement was not found within another six months it could have a serious effect on patients and the hospital's remaining oncologists.

Overworked doctors were likely to leave, he said. "You burn them out [and] their marriages break down or they're not able to be good fathers and mothers."

He was leaving the public system because he could provide a higher standard of care through a private clinic. "We have the opportunity of getting state-of-the-art machines without having to wait 10 years."

A spokesman for Health Minister Tony Ryall referred The Dominion Post to individual district health boards for comment.

- © Fairfax NZ News