Tasmania's largest public hospital has been stripped of its accreditation for psychiatry care training and will lose three psychiatric registrars.
The Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Psychiatrists, which controls accreditation, would not comment further but the State Government said the hospital's accreditation had been suspended pending a visit from the college.
Opposition Leader Rebecca White used Question Time to reveal the college made the decision on Friday.
"We are now in a devastating situation where because of the cuts to acute mental health beds, the state's tertiary hospital is not accredited for psychiatry training," she said.
"Three registrars who are working on the acute mental health ward in the Royal Hobart Hospital (RHH) will no longer be able to continue working in those positions."
Ms White said the situation was highlighted in June and was avoidable.
"Staff will be lost from the hospital at a time it's already under enormous pressure," she said.
"This places the very future of psychiatric training in Tasmania at risk."
Greens spokeswoman Rosalie Woodruff said the withdrawal of the registrars would leave a big hole.
"It's not easy to just employ two to three more psychiatrists, there's already a shortage overall," she said.
"The Minister needs to reveal the plan for filling those positions.
"The damage to the RHH reputation is far less important than the issues for mental health patients."
Fix on the way, Government says
Health Minister Michael Ferguson said the Government was working to fix the situation.
"We're committed to the training program," he said.
"The instruction I've provided to Tasmania Health Service (THS) is to work with the college to fix this and that will involve employing additional staff and putting our best foot forward."
Mr Ferguson said there would be no disruption to patient care.
"I have been further advised that arrangements have been made to bring in medical officers from the community mental health service to provide services to the inpatient wards and patients, while the registrars will be working with the community mental health team with the agreement of the college," he said.
THS chief operations officer Nicola Dymond said it was in the process of recruiting more staff.
"There is a recognised national shortage of qualified psychiatric staff, but we will do all we can to try and gain these staff and help improve existing workloads," she said.
"The THS yesterday wrote to the college to provide this assurance that advertising would immediately commence for recruitment of additional staff and committed to work with the college to address their concerns."
Mr Ferguson accused Labor of running a "scare campaign" and said the State Government was committed to opening more mental health beds, including additional ones announced on Tuesday.
