A senior doctor is getting flown in from Australia to the Palmerston North Hospital for one week out of every four, working the remaining three remotely.<\/p>\n
Te Whatu Ora will not discuss how much this costs, but says the senior addictions clinician position the doctor fills is difficult to recruit for.<\/p>\n
And sector groups agree – saying it highlights the shortage of specialist staff.<\/p>\n
Dr Leon Nixon is the lead clinician for the opioid substitution treatment service at Palmerston North Hospital, a position he filled in the middle of last year.<\/p>\n
But he is only physically present one week in every four.<\/p>\n
Te Whatu Ora would not say what the travel and accommodation costs were, nor if it paid the bill. It also declined to say if the arrangement was permanent, saying it did not publicly discuss personal employment contracts.<\/p>\n
National Association of Opioid Treatment Providers co-chairperson Dr Sam McBride said the situation was the result of a shortage of expertise.<\/p>\n
“Ideally, we’d have someone who’s located within the area and is able to provide a better, more consistent cover,” he said.<\/p>\n
“However, these are the sorts of compromises that are having to be made to ensure that services continue to function.”<\/p>\n
The arrangement could work, McBride said.<\/p>\n
“When you’ve got a limited range of specialists, you need to think how you can cover gaps, as it were.<\/p>\n
“In this situation it seems like a pretty pragmatic response given it’s a pretty experienced clinician, who’s well regarded in the [alcohol and other drugs] field.”<\/p>\n
That field was part of the addictions speciality, which McBride said could often play second fiddle.<\/p>\n
“It’s a small, niche area. It tends to be vulnerable in that regard. It’s often overlooked by planners in terms of sexier or more high-profile areas.<\/p>\n
“It often suffers sitting alongside mental health, which tends to take more priority.<\/p>\n
“There are particular issues in that. We’ve got a lack of training pathways for specialists.”<\/p>\n
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A senior doctor is getting flown in from Australia to the Palmerston North Hospital for one week out of every four, working the remaining three remotely. Te Whatu Ora will not discuss how much this costs, but says the senior addictions clinician position the doctor fills is difficult to recruit for. And sector groups agree […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":9110,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[222,174],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9109","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-latest-news","category-nz-news"],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9109","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9109"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9109\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9111,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9109\/revisions\/9111"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/9110"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9109"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9109"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9109"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}