Resident Doctors Association secretary Dr Deborah Powell said she was aware of one person who had their surgery postponed. Photo: 123RF
At least one elective surgery was postponed at Auckland Hospital last week and it is feared other surgeries could be at risk because of a reduction in staff booking them.
However, Health New Zealand said no elective surgeries at the hospital were postponed next week and there was nothing unusual happening within the service.
Resident Doctors Association secretary Dr Deborah Powell said she was aware of one person who had their surgery postponed.
It was the second time surgery was postponed for the patient, who had to travel from outside the region for specialist treatment, she said.
"The whole family puts everything on hold for the surgery and then suddenly it's postponed and they have to go back to doing what they were doing before and wait for the next date.
"So it is disruptive to patients and their whānau when this sort of stuff happens and I know the clinical staff hate doing it, but priorities are acutes (emergencies) get done first so electives have to wait."
Without appropriate resources it would keep happening, she said.
"The hiring freeze which was not meant to impact on clinical staff, has, and simply because we need the people who are behind the scenes so we can get on and do our jobs.
"There are so many roles that support clinical practice, that without which, it just can't happen. So I think we are seeing the somewhat short-sighted outcome of a huge number of staff losses in the non-clinical roles, that do none-the-less impact on clinical roles."
At the same time hospitals were still losing clinical staff, Powell said.
"And the replacement process is really bureaucratic. It has to be escalated to a regional committee before they sign-off, even to replace a person - not the new FTE (full-time equivalent) - but just to replace a person.
"So this attitude towards staff is just grinding us down."
Association of Salaried Medical Specialists executive director Sarah Dalton said she understood the booking of elective surgeries at Auckland Hospital had been affected by a reduction in schedulers due to redundancies.
Schedulers booked the operations - which included non-emergencies such as hip and knee surgery - and any reduction in staff meant patient flow through electives could be hampered.
A focus by the government on reducing administration staff within the health system had flow-on effects, Dalton said.
"If doctors and other clinicians are having to spend time trying to sort out bookings, which I know a number of people have for example, and the admin related to admissions and patient journeys through hospital, that takes them away from being able to do other tasks that are more clinically focused and which other people can't do."
Numerous hospital services around the country remained understaffed and had been since before 2022, she said.
Elective surgeries were the "logical thing to stop when hospitals reach breaking point", she said.
"Acute services have to continue. That's our life and limb situations, that's the bottom-line business of hospitals.
"And given the stresses that our workforce and facilities have been under for a very long time now - we're talking years, not months - something's gonna have to give and it will have to be electives."
RNZ asked Health New Zealand if any other electives were postponed last week.
A spokesperson said all elective surgeries were going ahead next week and it was business as usual.
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