Healthcare staff are under enormous strain. Photo / Getty Images
New Zealand faces a risk that a growing number of health professionals could be eyeing the exit door for better working conditions abroad.
Dr Deborah Powell, national secretary of the New Zealand Resident Doctors Association, tells the Front Page podcast hospital staff are being burned out by the conditions they face on a daily basis.
"It's not just doctors and nurses, but all our health workers."
Everyone from radiographers to laboratory staff are being affected by the enormous daily pressure, with the latest figures showing that many patients are waiting more than six hours for emergency treatment at hospitals.
"They worked tirelessly through Covid. They're exhausted and the pressure is continuing. They're not doing Covid to the same extent anymore, but the pressure from these demands on the health service is just intense."
It's particularly hard on frontline staff, who know that the health of patients is often in their overburdened hands.
"For a doctor, the worst thing that could happen to them is that a patient suffers because they don't get to see them in time. It's completely outside their hands, which is where the stress comes from. And so, of course, they try to work harder and harder to get to see more and more patients, and that's where they make mistakes. And that's the second worst nightmare for a doctor: that they actually make a mistake and a patient suffers."
Powell says this simply isn't an environment that doctors or other health professionals want to work in.
"They're stressed and their morale is really low. They feel the patients' pain. They understand, but they're powerless… That's the sentiment for all health practitioners, but it's probably worse for doctors because they know if they don't get to someone, that person might die. That is a huge burden to carry."
Given there's little sign these issues will abate any time soon, Powell says there's growing concern about what this might mean for the healthcare sector.
"One of our greatest worries is that we'll see an increasing number of health practitioners leaving practice here in New Zealand. A lot of them are looking overseas and it's simply because they can't see themselves carrying on in this environment."
While resident doctors start working at 55 hours a week, Powell says that can quickly stretch to 70 hours if they're picking up additional shifts.
Powell puts the pressure on the health sector down to systemic issues that stretch back decades.
"The population of New Zealand really values its health system and they value the health workforce, but in financial terms not quite so much. Yes, health is expensive, but that's what it is. I'm not saying we should have an open chequebook – but we shouldn't be constantly holding budgets down."
She says that district health boards long put caps on staffing levels and tried to reduce the amount spent on full-time employees.
"We are talking 10, maybe 15 years that have seen wages in our health sector in proportion to wages overseas and wages outside health sector [at lower levels]. And it's seen fewer people employed."
The other concern hanging over the sector is that there simply aren't enough medical professionals moving through the New Zealand education system into the workforce.
"We have insufficient resident doctors coming out of medical school. We need another 200 at least. It takes years to train a doctor. So again, we should have been onto this years ago. It's just a failure to train enough and be forward-thinking."
This also applies to radiographers, sonographers and numerous other technicians who all play a crucial role in ensuring that people get treated quickly. New training positions have now opened up to fill these gaping holes, but it will still take years for them to get up to speed.
"It's just an absolute failure to deal with our workforce in a constructive and proactive way," she says.
What's particularly frustrating is that this crisis was telegraphed and doctors warned that it would happen.
"We now have a workforce crisis on our hands. We were watching it develop, so we had been lobbying for years. And we had to wait for the crisis to hit us before we actually did something. And that's a recurring theme, I'm afraid. When you get a crisis someone will finally do something, but it's five years too late."
So is immigration the answer? Will National's plan to reinstate health performance targets work to bring down wait times? And what else needs to change?
Listen to the full Front Page podcast for answers to these questions.
• The Front Page is a daily news podcast from the New Zealand Herald, available to listen to every weekday from 5am.
• You can follow the podcast at iHeartRadio, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.
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