KEY POINTS:
The number of trainee radiation therapists has been slashed, helping to put New Zealand "on the edge" of a fresh crisis in cancer treatment.
The Government in 2001 trumpeted an increase in places, which reached 40 in the 2003 intake. But intakes have since slumped at the sole course, run from Otago University at Wellington, to 24 this year.
The Herald learned of the cuts after the announcement on Monday that private-hospital owners MercyAscot and Southern Cross would jointly build and run New Zealand's first private radiotherapy clinic, in the Auckland suburb of Epsom.
MercyAscot chairman Dr Richard Fisher, when asked on Monday where its therapists would come from, said enough were being trained and cited the intake increases.
The university's head of radiation therapy, Karen Coleman, yesterday blamed the cuts on "resources within the hospitals".
"There is in New Zealand an insufficient workforce of experienced radiation therapists [to provide training]. What we did was glut the market. There's a lot of new graduates but a gap of experienced staff."
The Health Ministry said it was concerned by the cuts and was working with the university and hospitals to try to encourage a higher intake next year.
The Auckland District Health Board, which has sent patients to Australia for radiotherapy because of treatment delays, told the parliamentary health select committee in March: "Workforce is the biggest limiting factor over this particular issue ... "
The board is deeply concerned about the private clinic's impact on the workforce and that it might "fragment" public services.
The national secretary of the radiation therapists' union, Deborah Powell, welcomed the private clinic, saying it filled a gap that should have been filled by public services, but warned it would increase competition in an already tight international labour market.
So many senior therapists had left New Zealand's cancer centres that the level of training being done could not continue.
With the demand for radiotherapy increasing sharply because of expanded cancer screening, especially for breast cancer, the loss of therapists, particularly seniors, to higher-paying jobs overseas was an ongoing problem, she said.
"I think we are sitting on the edge of a volcano. We need more units and more staff."
Australia was building new radiation therapy clinics and the packages of pay and conditions for junior therapists were 20 to 50 per cent higher than in New Zealand.
The base salary for new graduates was $45,000 in Auckland and $43,400 at the country's other five cancer centres.
Her estimate of the number of therapists needed at the private clinic for the one radiotherapy machine it would at first operate was, at nine or 10, up to double Dr Fisher's claim.
Dr Fisher said yesterday: "We need four or five radiation therapists and if you are graduating 24 a year, that's not an enormous chunk. Our understanding is that there have been people out there, quite a lot, who have gone immediately to Australia. It's not our intention to capture people from district health boards."
