THE Launceston General Hospital emergency department has suffered a mass exodus with eight out of 11 specialists quitting, retiring or reducing their hours.
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Tasmanian Health Service chief executive David Alcorn confirmed a number of emergency department specialists had recently retired or resigned.
It is understood that five doctors will leave with another resignation pending. One specialist has reduced their hours and another has indicated they will move to another job.
Most will be gone by the end of July.
"Our emergency medicine specialists and their director at the LGH are working with THS executives to respond to these changes and assist us with future recruitment,” Dr Alcorn said.
"We are all keen to improve hospital-wide care at the LGH and ensure that existing patient safety levels are not diminished."
LGH Medical Staff Association chairman Scott Parkes said emergency department consultants were struggling with an unsustainable workload and lack of resourcing.
He said there were not enough staff or beds to allow patients who came into the emergency department but needed longer term treatment to move into wards.
That meant patients were staying in emergency longer than clinically recommended, Dr Parkes said.
“The emergency department is a fantastic facility … but it is not set up for people to recover in there,” he said.
“The beds are always full, there are people in those beds who should be in wards but there are no beds available so they’re not getting care they need so they’re staying longer.
“They’re trying to treat emergency patients in triage in the waiting room – that is so stressful for my colleagues.”
Dr Parkes said hospital staff had tried to improve efficiencies wherever possible but could only do so much with what they had.
“(We need) either more resources or, at the very least, a recognition of the problem and say ‘We understand you’re doing your best, we understand this is a resourcing problem, but we don’t have the funds at the moment’,” he said.
Dr Parkes said there were also concerns about the hospital’s ability to recruit and train emergency medical specialists. “This has potentially very adverse consequences on our ability to maintain accreditation as a training institution for emergency medicine,” he said.