Surgeon critical of Canterbury

Some Canterbury health professionals have been actively undermining Dunedin's neurosurgery service, Dunedin Hospital's clinical leader of intensive care, Mike Hunter, says.

Commenting on the impasse over southern neurosurgery services, Mr Hunter said he believed some Canterbury health professionals had been actively working to make it impossible for the Otago District Health Board to employ neurosurgeons.

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They were creating a situation for which they then had the solution, he said.

Mr Hunter has written a series of articles for the Otago Daily Times, beginning on Monday, giving his views on the issue.

He had decided to go public with his opinions because he felt the community needed to understand some of the background issues and that Dunedin was "on a hiding to nothing trying to keep the unit going and to employ people".

The issue was not only about neurosurgery, but also about finding a satisfactory solution to the delivery of all specialist surgical services in the South.

People needed to know that the issues were "not just squeaky clean" with everyone motivated by concern for the public good.

He alleged some Canterbury health professionals had been "actively undermining" the Dunedin service "for their own ends - for lifestyle".

Canterbury wanted a one-site service with six consultants and three or four registrars. This meant the consultants would never have to get out of bed in the early hours to attend patients, he said.

If that meant that people in the southern part of the South Island had no service when they were "acutely unwell and dying, it's not good enough", he said.

A request to discuss issues raised by Mr Hunter was declined by Canterbury neurosurgery unit clinical leader Martin MacFarlane and former Otago neurosurgeon Suzanne Jackson (who now works in Canterbury) yesterday.

In the articles, Mr Hunter said if trainees who might have come as newly qualified consultants were discouraged from applying for positions, before long, the only applicants were those who could not get a job anywhere else.