Gladstone Hospital has announced the return of 24/7 emergency caesareans as it was revealed Queensland Health has a 15 per cent vacancy rate for doctors in the state's rural and remote regions.
Queensland Health Director-General Shaun Drummond said health workforce shortages were so acute across the board, the state did "not have the specialists to meet the demand right now".
"We have a vacancy rate for doctors inside Brisbane of about 1.5 per cent," Mr Drummond said on ABC Radio Brisbane.
"In rural and remote, it's 15 per cent."
Mr Drummond's stark analysis of health workforce challenges comes as Central Queensland Hospital and Health Service (CQHHS) chief executive Emma McCahon announced an obstetric locum had finally been secured for the Gladstone Hospital, allowing the return to 24/7 emergency caesareans at its maternity unit within weeks.
"We have a signed contract so we are hopeful that in the next few weeks, we'll be able to move to phase two of our birthing services, which will be having emergency cover 24/7 for women who are birthing at Gladstone Hospital," Dr McCahon said.
But full birthing services are not expected to return until mid-year when four new obstetricians are due to start work across Gladstone and Rockhampton public hospitals.
'Worldwide shortage of health workers'
Mr Drummond said the Gladstone Hospital's maternity crisis was a symptom of a worldwide shortage of health workers.
"The clinical workforce is not growing at the rate that the demand and the pressures on the system are," he said.
"It's such a strong market, the demand far exceeds the supply.
"We're getting into a vicious circle across the country of competing with each other instead of tackling what is at the heart of this issue, which is we need more people qualified."
Mr Drummond said Queensland Health was working with the state's medical schools "to significantly increase by more than a third the amount of medical students that are trained inside Queensland".
"Then we'll provide the pathway for them to have specialty training inside the public system," he said.
"We've got to create more clinical specialists, not just doctors."
Despite the dire shortage of health specialists, particularly in maternity, Mr Drummond stopped short of labelling the issue a crisis.
"I don't believe that we're in crisis," he said.
"But at the moment, if we don't change how many people that we're training, have a look at all of the models around now, we can support stronger midwifery models, in the next 10 years we will absolutely be in crisis."
'Not a fair deal'
Acting Premier Steven Miles said the anticipated return to 24/7 emergency caesareans in Gladstone was January 30.
"That's really promising for health services in Gladstone," Mr Miles said.
But Queensland Opposition leader David Crisafulli described the announcement as "political weasel words".
"Saying that there is people coming on and there are little elements of a maternity service that have returned, that's not a fair deal to me," Mr Crisafulli said.
"That city deserves what they have had for generations. Women in a city of 60,000 deserve the right to have the health care they relied on for generations.
"In a modern Queensland we should be improving the health system, not taking services away from regional areas."
