Hospitals will be forced to close specialist mental health beds across NSW as more than half of psychiatrists in the public health system prepare to resign over working conditions.
One doctor has warned that mental health patients will likely overwhelm emergency departments as the NSW government scrambles to make arrangements ahead of the scheduled mass resignation.
Some 203 of the state’s 295 public sector psychiatrists handed in their resignations in December, with the permanent walkout due to take place on January 21.
The mental health specialists have quit over uncompetitive salaries and chronic understaffing.
As a result, staff are preparing to close seven of the 14 beds at the mental health rehab unit at Sydney’s Prince Of Wales Hospital, a leaked internal document has revealed.
At least four of 12 beds at the hospital’s mental health intensive-care unit are also due to be closed, while the Kiloh Centre for acute inpatient mental health issues will have an ‘inability to maintain their (24) bed base’, the document says.
At Concord Hospital in Sydney’s west, the 26 full-time psychiatrists managing 172 beds are set to be reduced to nine specialists.
Chris Ryan, a psychiatrist from UNSW, said colleagues were warning that some hospital mental health units will close entirely if the action went ahead.
‘There’s no possible way of running a large service if there are very few psychiatrists available to run it,’ he said.
Emergency departments would inevitably be filled with mental health patients following the resignations, Dr Ryan added, as patients could not be triaged to unstaffed beds.
‘They’re not going to stop coming just because there are no beds, they’ll keep mounting up,’ he said.
‘Emergency departments are busy and horrible places so are not great environments to get well … the idea is you get them out very quickly.’
The state government said no decisions on bed closures had been made.
NSW Health was scrambling to establish a mental health emergency operations centre to ‘help alleviate patient flow and pressures’ with the looming staffing crisis.
Department secretary Susan Pearce recently wrote to the specialists begging them to reconsider their resignations.
She acknowledged the concerns of the psychiatrists and the ‘hugely valuable role they play in the health system’.
Dr Ryan, who is not resigning but supports his colleagues who have done so, said the issue went beyond wages.
‘The reason that people are resigning is because we can’t get people into the system to take jobs, and the reason we can’t get people into the system to take jobs is because you can get a lot more money elsewhere,’ he said.
NSW officials have said they can’t feasibly agree to the psychiatrists’ demand for a 25 per cent pay increase, which is well above the 10.5 per cent three-year deal offered to all public-sector staff
n Salaried Medical Officers Federation NSW acting executive director Ian Lisser warned this the walkout is ‘an impending disaster for NSW and our entire health system’.
‘With the current staff shortages, we’ve already seen mental health beds and clinics across the state close. The crisis will see even more beds and clinics close.
‘Distressed patients presenting to NSW emergency department requiring treatment from psychiatrists could be left in the ED for up to five days. They deserve better,’ he said.
On Monday, federal health minister Mark Butler urged the state government and doctors to resume negotiations or risk ‘devastating consequences for psychiatric patients and their families’.
NSW Health offered professionals a 10.5 per cent pay rise since April last year, which would be the largest pay increase to psychiatry professionals in more than ten years, according to the minister for mental health, Rose Jackson.
That offer, however, was rejected by ASMOF, who want a 25 per cent pay increase for psychiatry staff specialists.
The union has long claimed the increase would fall in line with salaries of psychiatrists in other states and address what they believe is the root cause of understaffing in NSW’s mental health service.
‘We urgently call on the Minns government to take action to fill the 140 vacant psychiatrist positions in NSW by providing the remuneration and conditions necessary to attract and retain the doctors our mental health system requires.’
Health minister Ryan Park begged doctors to withdraw their resignations.
‘Don’t do this to patients. Don’t do this to the healthcare system that I know you love and support. Don’t do this to your colleagues who I know you value and trust,’ Park said.