AMA NSW president visits Dubbo

Dr Saxon Smith visited Dubbo Hospital yesterday to meet with junior doctors, senior clinicians and local GPs to discuss local issues.

"Today is about getting infrastructure up that is needed for the region," Dr Smith said.

"We know the emergency department here sees more emergency patients than Orange or Bathurst and services smaller hospitals like Bourke.

"Dubbo's very good when it comes to emergency surgery but it starts to fall behind somewhat when you look at elective surgery and the semi-urgents, that comes down to infrastructure. So the new hospital, the new surgical and birthing suites that are going to be here, they're critical to ensure we can continue to provide these services at the quality required by a growing population.

"Largely the delay in the infrastructure has been out of our hands, you can't control a company going into receivership, but we need to keep pressing the government to ensure the new hospital's delivered."

A business case for stages 3 and 4 of the hospital was currently being worked on, he said.

Infrastructure acquisition needed to be done keeping in mind the need for staff to operate and service various technologies, Dr Smith said.

One example was the community-led push to get a linear accelerator at Dubbo to provide radiation therapy for cancer patients.

"That is a $2 million investment, but you then need to look at the servicing around it," he said.

"The staff, the radiation oncologist, the radiotherapy nurses, the radiation technicians and the radiographers. They are critical components.

"I grew up in central west NSW myself and we know the community likes to be treated where they live but there are still some services that need to be centralised to some degree. But there will come a time when we pass that threshold when it will be achievable."

The AMA would also use the lead-up to the state election to push for more rurally-based training positions, Dr Smith said, something Dubbo Hospital did very well with its "excellent training program for young doctors".

"We know that if you train here you are more likely to stay here and continue to service the community, and these are great areas to live," he said.

Greater priority also needed to be given to streamlining the accreditation process for junior doctors, Dr Smith said.

"There are more roadblocks than roundabouts at the moment," he said.

Dubbo Hospital director of medical services Dr Randall Greenberg said equity of access to care was an ongoing issue he would discuss with Dr Smith.

"One of our biggest problems is even getting patients to the bigger hospitals," he said.

"I'll ring a doctor and say, 'I have a patient that needs to go to a tertiary hospital and the doctors says 'I agree', but then the bed manager says, 'there are no beds'.

"This is despite the fact that if a person lived in Newtown, if we were talking about RPA for instance, they'd be in that hospital but people are left out here for days and days.

"It's a double whammy. I know we can't have a brain surgeon out here or a cardio-thoracic surgeon because we haven't got the numbers, but we feel there could be more to be done so that patient in Dubbo should be able to go directly to that hospital. That's one of our biggest bugbears."

Meanwhile Dr Smith, whose specialty is dermatology, used the visit to raise awareness of sun safety among western NSW residents.

"Every exposure to UV light contributes to our skin cancer risk and that's a significant issue for Australians, we've the highest rate in the world," he said.

"It's an issue in rural communities, I grew up on a farm and my father's generation are having lots of skin cancers cut out.

"We have a beautiful country. The issue is not so much staying out of the sun altogether but incorporating sunsmart measures - slip, slop, slap and enjoy the cricket and a barbecue."