Frustrated surgeons opt out of public healthSurgeons are...

Frustrated surgeons opt out of public health

Surgeons are frustrated by the focus on administration and not on patient care.

A hostile public health system is being blamed for Australian surgeons spending less time working in public hospitals.

A survey conducted by the Australasian College of Surgeons revealed that 60 per cent of surgeons spend most of their time in the private sector because they are frustrated with under-resourced public hospitals.

But the president of the Orthopaedic Association George Sikorski says surgeons are also tired of working for a health system that is too focussed on budgets rather than patient care.

He says public health administrators must be properly trained in health care to ensure that medical staff are encouraged to continue working in the sector.

"The current administration have lost their clinical focus," he said.

"Increasingly we're being looked after by people who are not medically trained and whose loyalties are in fact to their own administrative structure rather than to the patient."

The president of the college, Russell Stitz, also says Australia risks running out of surgeons unless the number of training places in the public sector is significantly increased.

He says they need 120 more surgical training positions immediately as an ageing population will mean more surgeons will be needed within the next decade.

"It's urgent, we know that we are going to increase the number of surgeons by about 50 per cent over the next 20 years, that's the amount of surgery we'll need to do," Dr Stitz said.

"Unless we increase those surgical positions now we will not have the capacity to do that. We have an increasing ageing population, so it's critical right now."