'The system will eat itself': Alarm over reliance on locums in NSW public hospitals

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'There’s a fear the system will eat itself and everyone will become locums.'

A growing number of hospital doctors are opting to work as locums for more pay and flexibility rather than take permanent staff positions, forcing hospitals to compete for short-term staff to plug vacancies, medical experts say.

He said that junior doctors might also choose locuming if they failed to get into the training scheme of their choice. Across the state, locums account for 3.4 per cent of full-time equivalent medical staff working in the public system, according to NSW Health. The figures provided toare based on payroll reporting for May 2019, and can fluctuate throughout the year, but a NSW Health spokesperson said it had been broadly steady for the past four years.

“We’re seeing permanent doctors leave for higher paying jobs as locums and there’s a fear the system will eat itself and everyone will become locums,” the specialist said. “It’s a vicious cycle as more people leave for locuming, the people who are left work harder because there are more gaps, there are more locums to fill those gaps, locuming looks more attractive, and there’s a shift in that direction.

 

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The same as every other commercial enterprise. Employ casuals

just like cleaners n pathology it is LNP philosophy to contract our services Get priv corp to build n run new hosp NSW gov is allergic to debt so they outsource more n more With contractors they can turn off d tap each time they get a budget blowout Accounting trick

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