Pahiatua Medical Centre staff threaten resignations unless under-resourcing addressed

Staff at a Tararua district health centre say they will resign en masse, if its owners don't address problems arising from under-resourcing.Pahiatua Medical Centre nurse practitioner Victoria Perry told RNZ Checkpoint failure to replace departing staff had put preventative screenings for bowel, breast and prostate cancer a year behind schedule, while regular patients were waiting three months for appointments.The clinic's owner, Tararua Health Group, declined to comment.Perry said the clinic's 16 staff were also demanding the Primary Health Organisation (PHO) - which contracts the clinic for its services - intervenes before the end of next week.She said she feared people would die, if the clinic could not provide even its most basic of services and follow-up tests for its 5000 patients."By the time they do see someone in our practice, that problem may be overwhelming and be unfixable," Perry said."We're not responding to those sorts of things in close to safe timeframes. It makes us feel sick to the stomach that we can't practice like we've been trained to do and like we're ethically obliged to do."She said an external workflow review proposed by the PHO amounted to further "bureaucratic delay", and would not address the management failures behind the clinic's understaffing and delays."At the moment, what we can't do is even immunise children or give the flu vaccines," Perry said. "We've got 1.6 nurses where we used to have five."Although the Minister of Health is saying, 'please go get your vaccines', we don't actually have capacity to administer them."The clinic's staff wanted the PHO to expand its proposed review to include investigation of the clinic's management and guarantee a timely process - including direct and confidential consultations between the reviewers and frontline staff.Perry said, if the PHO did not instigate the broader review, the entire frontline team would submit their resignations by 16 October."Please, please can you listen? Please can we have more clinicians?"Please can we have more nurses? Please can we have more administrators to support us?"It's not working. We're at the bottom here, crying out for help."PHO chief executive Tony Wai said all parties, including Health New Zealand, were working together to understand the practice's challenges, and support staff and patients.He said the organisation was looking at a range of options to help maintain services, including workforce support, local clinical cover, telehealth and locum support where appropriate.It was also keeping in close contact with partners across the region and monitoring general practice capacity.Wai said the practice remained open and services were continuing as usual.