On Wednesday, it was confirmed measures to cope with ongoing nursing shortages and overcrowded wards for acute patients would include closing the hospital's community day programmes for up to three months.
No date has been set for the closure but concern has been expressed by both users of the service and some staff that it could lead to an increase in acute admissions.
The board is also planning to temporarily reduce the number of beds in the rehabilitation ward at Wakari Hospital, possibly by eight, but details of this are still not settled either.
At the Otago District Health Board hospital advisory committee meeting yesterday, chief operating officer Vivian Blake said a draft of the plan was expected to be put before the board at its meeting next week.
PSA organiser Mark Ryan said the problem had been around for more than three years and would not be fixed in three months. Improving pay rates and conditions, including opportunity for professional development, would make it easier to attract nurses.
At the meeting today, he expected staff would be concerned whether the board proposals were the most effective way of dealing with the situation. The association would be seeking to finalise a protocol in respect of any temporary relocation of nurses.
New Zealand Nurses Organisation Otago organiser Lorraine Lobb said there was a risk that patients using the day programme could end up as acute patients but it would have been a bigger risk to close a lot of beds in the acute area.
She would be monitoring the situation closely to ensure that the board would re-evaluate the situation if closing the day programmes was causing more problems than it solved.
She did not believe more money would solve the problem. Her members were feeling their safe practice was at risk.
Mrs Blake told the advisory committee the board had been offered the use of two acute beds by the Southland board should they need them and they were also looking to the South Canterbury and Canterbury boards for any help they could offer.
The board already uses Ashburn Clinic when its acute wards become overcrowded. During this financial year, it has spent $232,000 on such transfers.
Mrs Blake emphasised the board was not suggesting people should avoid mental health services.
People who thought they needed help should continue to make contact with the services and they would be assessed and their needs addressed in the way which was most appropriate.
Board chairman Richard Thomson, who vacated the chair during discussion of mental health services because of a conflict of interest, said later in the meeting he considered a big problem affecting recruitment of mental health workers was the public "execution'' of those who made mistakes in hospitals.
Who would want to do a job which was becoming harder because they were increasingly stretched and then when mistakes happened people were publicly "executed'', he asked.
People needed to think about what this achieved and whether "we are shooting ourselves in the foot".
