Urgent meeting with Christchurch surgeons & health officials to discuss cancelled surgeries

Christchurch surgeons have held an urgent meeting with health officials to discuss cancelled surgeries.

It follows a major shortage of anaesthetic technicians.

Christchurch colorectal surgeon Chris Wakeman told Newstalk ZB the hospital was now allowing locum anaesthetic technicians.

“But that’s not going to fix the problem, because we're 30 full-time anaesthetic technicians down.”

Wakeman revealed the hospital had decreased the planned surgical schedule from the start of this week.

“Previously you would just turn up to work and you were never sure if surgery was going to be cancelled or not, so they have decided to give us some certainty.”

However, the situation is dire for patients who need non-cancer operations.

From a colorectal surgery perspective, Wakeman said they were only able to work on cancer patients due to the shortage of anaesthetic technicians.

“One of my colleagues was in tears because her patient is incontinent due to childbirth injuries but she can’t provide any surgery. There's no light at the end of the tunnel for those patients with non-cancer operations,” he said.

Wakeman said one of his patients was going to lose their job because they can’t get an operation because it is not cancer-related.

He added that referring patients to other regions is much more complicated, but he was forced to refer a patient to Auckland hospital yesterday.

He said it was a worry for patients having surgery delayed.

It was also causing stress for surgeons not being able to provide any certainty for people.

A hospital spokeswoman said there was a meeting held yesterday for surgical senior medical officers to discuss perioperative services as a whole.

“The meeting has been scheduled for some time and was originally meant to be held on March 8, it had to be rescheduled to March 22.”

She said “for some specialities there is a 50% reduction in their usual capacity this week, however, we are aiming to deliver up to 70% of our overall planned surgery this week – this does rely on having sufficient staff and bed resources each day. This is being managed on a session by session basis to ensure all available resources are utilised.”

The hospital spokeswoman said “we currently have three anaesthetic technicians (ATs) working for us via an agency.

We are working to bring in further agency staff and registered nurse anaesthetic assistants, among other initiatives, to support us in the anaesthetic technician space and expect this further support to be in place by the end of April.”