Hospitals in Gosford and Wyong cancel gynaecology appointments due to staff shortages

“Women’s health needs to be taken seriously,” Hankins said. “We need the resources to care for women and babies on the Central Coast.”

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Hankins and Manning are members of the Australian Salaried Medical Officers Federation (ASMOF) NSW doctors’ union, which supports the concerns of the nine doctors.

Chief executive Scott McLachlan said the health district would apologise for the inconvenience and was urgently seeking alternatives for patients affected by the cancellations. Hospital management had met with doctors to ensure all urgent and critical care could continue unaffected, McLachlan said.

“However, attracting and retaining the necessary workforce, particularly doctors, to regional areas has long been a challenge for every state and territory in Australia,” he said.

It is the latest health district to feel the effects of staff shortages in women’s health and childbirth.

Health Minister Ryan Park told budget estimates on Tuesday that the workforce shortage was being felt particularly hard in regional and rural communities after Nationals MP Sarah Mitchell raised the case of a woman who was turned away from Tamworth Hospital despite being in labour and “a few centimetres dilated”.

The woman’s partner drove her three hours to Maitland Hospital to give birth, Mitchell said.

Thousands of midwives and nurses ignored the Industrial Relations Commission and went on strike for 12 hours on Tuesday, demanding a 15 percent pay rise for one year.

Park estimates the strike has forced hospitals to cancel “several hundred” planned surgeries.

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