Audiology staff difficulty

Colleen Coop
Colleen Coop
Dunedin Hospital is only offering an audiology service for urgent referrals through a private practitioner, reflecting the national shortage of public sector audiologists.

The board is readvertising positions in its reconfigured service after unsuccessfully seeking staff in October.

Emergency medicine and surgery general manager (Otago) Dr Colleen Coop said the purpose of the configuration last year was to establish a "different skill mix" than the service had previously and the changes were necessary to meet Ministry of Health specifications.

While the earlier advertising had attracted candidates, they had changed their minds over the Christmas period.

The board is continuing to use a Whangarei audiologist to provide follow-up testing for babies identified in initial assessments through the hearing screening programme which began in Otago and Southland in July.

Tauranga audiologist Cassandra Kerr, who is the public sector representative on the New Zealand New Zealand Audiological Society's professional affairs representation committee, said public sector audiologists had to provide more tests than their private counterparts for much less pay.

This meant it was difficult to attract people into public service.

It was not unusual for district health boards to have audiologists come in from outside their area, particularly for work with children.

Those planning the newborn hearing screening programme had been warned of the workforce difficulties before the scheme was introduced and were asked to heed lessons learned from mistakes made overseas but "they didn't listen".

There were so few audiologists confident with the auditory brain stem testing performed on babies that they were under considerable pressure.

Mrs Kerr said in her own case she had to return from maternity leave when her baby was 6 weeks old to undertake testing.

It was also much more difficult dealing with young children with hearing loss than with an elderly person because of the parents' responses.

National Screening Unit antenatal and newborn screening manager Jane McEntee, in an email response to Otago Daily Times questions, said the scheme was phased in over three years to allow district health boards to implement the programme to meet their specific needs.

This included employing a newborn hearing screening workforce and managing audiology referrals within their regions.

Mrs Kerr said starting salaries in public hospitals were about $53,000, while in private at that level the salary would be $60,000 to $80,000.

As a charge audiologist her salary was in the mid $80,000s, but if she was doing similar work privately she would be paid well over $100,000.

Public hospitals could also faced the situation where they spent time and effort training staff working towards their clinical competence certificates, only to have them leave once qualified.

The effect of people going overseas soon after they had completed their training was also impacting on the New Zealand workforce.

The intake at the two centres where audiologists trained, Auckland and Christchurch universities, totalled 24.

Mrs Kerr, who is also one of the society's examiners, said she thought that this number was about right.

Recent cuts to full funding for audiological costs by ACC which came into force this year would affect the private sector and could push more staff to go back to the public sector.

There are 150 fully qualified audiologists in New Zealand.

An estimated 400,000 people in New Zealand are estimated to have hearing difficulties.

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