Lurching from crisis to crisis in cancer care Elizabeth Brown | Senior Communications Advisor
“Few patients will get their treatment in the timely manner that they should.”
no cancer management beyond their GP or surgical referral service.
That is clinical director of radiation oncology Dr Scott Babington’s assessment of what is happening with cancer services in Canterbury.
“Unless we can magic up another 4–6 SMOs, we are going to be running a wait list for years and there will be harms ranging from distress to uncontrolled symptomatic progression that arise from that for which my colleagues and I feel immense personal responsibility and distress over.”
He paints a grim picture in which early last month there were 365 patients waiting for radiation therapy, some with treatment delays of up to four months. “We are meant to be treating patients with aggressive cancers within two weeks but cannot because we don’t have enough staff or capacity to meet this demand. It’s unacceptable. “Our demand has far outstripped our capacity, and we have been trying our hardest to do everything we can to avoid a waitlist. But there is only so much that you can do.” The picture is equally distressing in medical oncology. Medical oncologist Dr Matthew Strother says patients can now be waiting up to 12 weeks just to get a first specialist appointment, during which time they have 10 THE SPECIALIST | DECEMBER 2021
“We are meant to be treating patients with aggressive cancers within two weeks but cannot because we don’t have enough staff or capacity to meet this demand. It’s unacceptable."
Having to run a wait list is a direct consequence of a service operating over clinical capacity with an understaffed medical oncology team working over 40
hours a week, trying to juggle the number of patients already on the books, and those needing a first specialist appointment. An ASMS job sizing two years ago determined a shortfall of eight FTEs in terms of SMOs, not to mention the need for more RMOs and nurse specialists. Despite some additional FTEs this year, Matthew says the service is no better off than it was during an acute staffing crisis last year. There has been staff illness, the loss of locums and recruitment difficulties. That’s all before accrued annual leave is factored in, which cuts into clinical activity. He says to resolve the waitlist within a year as opposed to two to three years, they would need four additional SMO FTEs now. To resolve it within six months would require closer to 6 FTEs. He stresses that at this point with a waitlist, patients are experiencing harm, and excess deaths are likely. The department is running 3.3 FTEs short of budgeted SMO requirements with no confirmed replacements, and no foreseeable short-term recruitment possibilities.
