The Association of Salaried Medical Specialists has released a report entitled, 'Hospitals on the Edge' outlining a catalogue of issues raised by senior doctors in the country's public hospitals.

An extensive recruitment campaign to entice specialist doctors from overseas could help ease the burden on the country's senior doctors, the Association of Salaried Medical Specialists (ASMS) says.

Burnout, insufficient resourcing coupled with mounting patient demand has seen hospital care reach a "tipping point", with doctors struggling to keep up with demand for their services, the senior doctors and dentists' union said.

The "precarious state of New Zealand's public health services" has been laid bare in a new ASMS report, Hospitals on the Edge, released ahead of its annual conference on the same theme starting in Wellington on Thursday.

The report was prompted by the "rising concern" of members about the "increasingly unsafe state of our public hospitals and clinical services", the union said.

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Among the myriad of issues affecting the level and quality of care outlined in the report was the need to increase doctor numbers across all medical specialities, ASMS national president Professor Murray Barclay said.

While New Zealand has one of the highest percentages of foreign-trained doctors, ASMS said more were needed because of the difficulties in retaining locally-trained doctors, and to help alleviate heavy workloads current staff were dealing with.

SUPPLIED Association of Salaried Medical Specialists (ASMS) national president, Professor Murray Barclay says senior doctors are "expressing nothing less than desperation" as they attempt to cope with increasing hospital workloads.

"We have a lot of medical specialists around the country that are overworked, frustrated, worried, emotional. They're being asked to do more than what they can cope with and there is not enough staff in New Zealand.

"I guess the main issue is that it's really a plea for more investment into healthcare into New Zealand to allow there to be enough medical specialists and dentists to cope with patient demand," Barclay said.

Retaining our own trainees was a "real problem" with doctors and dentists able to find more attractive working conditions and higher pay overseas. The number of new doctors graduating from medical school was also failing to keep pace with population growth.

ROSA WOODS/STUFF Health Minister David Clark says more investment has been made to boost health professional numbers compared to the previous National Government. (File photo)

"When you don't have enough doctors in a service and everyone is working above and beyond the call of duty, people get burned out and eventually can't tolerate it anymore.

"The situation becomes unbearable. [Working conditions are] probably a more prime thing which are causing problems for doctors rather than salary. The salary adds to make it more attractive, but the working conditions are very important," Barclay said.

As the country's population continued to grow, acute hospital admissions and emergency department demand was outstripping available staffing and resources, while the report also estimated 430,000 children and adults had an unmet need for hospital care.

STUFF The Association of Salaried Medical Specialists has released its 'Hospitals on the Edge' report ahead of its annual conference in Wellington this week. (File photo)

"There are simply too few staff, too few acute hospital beds, too many patients discharged before they should be, too many facilities unfit for purpose, and too many patients denied access to timely treatment because hospitals lack capacity," the report read.

Health Minister David Clark attributed blame for chronic under-funding of the health sector to the previous National government, saying its long term problems were inherited.

"We've invested more in our workforces, and since this Government took office there are now 1699 additional nurses, 677 more doctors, 105 more midwives, and 594 allied health staff working in our hospitals.

"Given that it can take up to seven years to train a medical specialist, we acknowledge that it will take time to rebuild these workforces, just as it will take more than one or two Budgets to address nine years of neglect, but this Government has made a good start," Clark said.

The Government has also "committee $2.45 billion to refurbish rundown hospitals and build news ones," Clark added.

UNION RECOMMENDATIONS TO IMPROVE HEALTH SECTOR

Increase integration between hospital services, primary care and social services to provide a "good patient-centred continuum of care"

Provide better support to staff to "flourish, rather than simply survive each day"

Address staff shortages to enable genuine patient-centred care

Adopt responsible funding policies to match policy aspirations

When planning to fix hospital buildings, talk with those who use them

More effort and urgency in addressing the determinants of ill health like poverty and affordable housing

Start measuring and monitoring unmet need for hospital care

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