Acute shortage of palliative care specialists

Friday, November 14th, 2014

New Zealand is desperately short of palliative medicine specialists.

“There will be a crisis in that workforce within five years unless something is done urgently to address the situation,” says Ian Powell, Executive Director of the Association of Salaried Medical Specialists (ASMS).

“Senior doctors providing end-of-life care tell us that 55 palliative medicine positions exist for specialists around New Zealand, spread between community services such as hospices and within hospitals.

“Of these positions, 22% are currently vacant and within the next five years a further 42% of the palliative medicine specialist workforce is due to retire.”

Powell says 30 new palliative medicine specialists are needed within five years just to maintain services at their current levels – without taking into account the impact of New Zealand’s aging population

“The reality for the Government, Health Workforce New Zealand and the DHBs is that we need to train more palliative medicine specialists.”

“That means increasing the number of fully funded medical registrar training positions from the nine that are currently available to at least 14 positions.”

“This would still not meet the need that is become more and more apparent but at least it would be a step in the right direction.”

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