Between 15 August, 2021, and 26 June, 2022, 13,410 surgeries were cancelled nationally. File photo Photo: 123rf/ Georgiy Datsenko
Nearly 7500 patients waiting more than a year for surgery are now meant to have spots on operating lists - but some in the sector say it's unlikely it will speed things up as the workforce remains at breaking point.
Between 15 August, 2021, and 26 June, 2022, 13,410 surgeries were cancelled nationally.
One of them was Kerikeri woman Jane, whose gall bladder was supposed to be removed last November, after three years of infections and gall stones.
By early July, Jane was bouncing between her local hospital and Whangārei Hospital's emergency department in agony due to an infection, only to be given opioids and antibiotics and sent home.
She was finally admitted through ED.
"I was saying, 'I can't live like this'. At that point, I thought I was going to die," Jane said. Stuff agreed to omit Jane's real name due to the trauma she has already experienced.
The morning after her surgery, she was rushed to Auckland Hospital for an emergency procedure - a scope was put down her throat to clear blocked bile ducts. It was a "horrible" experience she believed she wouldn't have needed had her gallbladder been dealt with sooner.
Jane said it was traumatising to endure such pain for so long and she empathised with others who were waiting.
"It's not like you are choosing to get a boob job. There's 7000 people getting progressively sicker."
In July, Te Whatu Ora - Health NZ (HNZ) ordered all 20 districts to give surgical slots to the 7475 patients who had been waiting at least a year by 31 August. The surgeries weren't required to be done by then, they were just supposed to be scheduled.
HNZ was unable to confirm if all districts had met the deadline, but said there had been "determination" to schedule as many patients as possible who had been waiting the longest.
Photo: Stuff / Rachel Thomas
Association of Salaried Medical Specialists executive director Sarah Dalton said while the move was a worthwhile aspiration, it was unlikely to be meaningful.
"There's considerable scepticism as to what, if any, difference these new lists will make," she said.
"Services are still under the pump and why wouldn't they be? Nothing has changed in the past two months in terms of workforce or building capacity."
An anaesthetic technician - a workforce experiencing critical shortages - said the move was a joke.
"It's an academic exercise ... it's not going to matter because we don't have the ability to do it," said the technician, who is based in the Wellington region and spoke on the condition of anonymity.
The orthopaedics team they worked in was down two surgeons, and cover was still being flown up and down from Christchurch.
However, a key leader at the Royal Australasian College of Surgeons (RACS) believed there was some room to move, but accepted pace would be limited by workforce shortages and demand for urgent or acute surgeries.
"Those things don't magically go away," associate professor Andrew MacCormick, chairperson of RACS' Aotearoa national committee, said.
"But I think as long as we're not trying to just shoehorn people in and we do it in a sensible and stratgeic way, leaving room for acute cases ... it should be feasible."
MacCormick, also a general surgeon in the Counties Manukau district, said the sector desperately needed a 20-year vision for workforce development, resourcing and alternative models of care.
"[And] it's unhelpful if it's relitigated every election cycle."
Dalton said an obvious solution was to enable a "learn while you earn" model for trainees.
"Stop forcing midwives to be without income while they are learning, put in decent support.
"We are haemorrhaging good people out of our system that we can ill afford to lose, and there is not much light at the end of the tunnel."
- This story was originally published on Stuff.