One doctor has warned that mental health patients will likely fill out emergency departments as the NSW government scrambles to make arrangements ahead of the scheduled mass resignation.
Some 203 of the state's 295 public sector psychiatrists handed in their resignations in December, with the permanent walkout due to take place on January 21.
The mental health specialists say the public sector system is failing patients due to uncompetitive salaries and chronic understaffing.
NSW Health secretary Susan Pearce begged the psychiatrists to reconsider their resignations. (Dan Himbrechts/AAP PHOTOS)
Staff are preparing to close seven of the 14 mental health beds at the mental health rehab unit at Sydney's Prince Of Wales Hospital, a leaked internal document has revealed.
At least four of 12 beds at the hospital's mental health intensive-care unit are due to be closed, while the Kiloh Centre for acute inpatient mental health issues will have an "inability to maintain their (24) bed base", the document says.
At Concord Hospital in Sydney's west, the 26 full-time psychiatrists managing 172 beds are set to be reduced to nine specialists.
Chris Ryan, a psychiatrist from UNSW, said colleagues were warning that some hospital mental health units could be forced to close if the action went ahead.
"There's no possible way of running a large service if there are very few psychiatrists available to run it," he told AAP.
Emergency departments would inevitably be filled with mental health patients following the resignations, Dr Ryan added, as patients could not be triaged to unstaffed beds.
"They're not going to stop coming just because there are no beds, they'll keep mounting up," he said.
"Emergency departments are busy and horrible places so are not great environments to get well ... the idea is you get them out very quickly."
The state government said no decisions on bed closures had been made.
NSW Health was scrambling to establish a mental health emergency operations centre to "help alleviate patient flow and pressures" with the looming staffing crisis.
Department secretary Susan Pearce recently wrote to the specialists begging them to reconsider their resignations.
She said she acknowledged the concerns of the psychiatrists and the "hugely valuable role they play in the health system".
Dr Ryan, who is not resigning but supports his colleagues who have chosen to do so, said the issues went beyond wages.
"The reason that people are resigning is because we can't get people into the system to take jobs, and the reason we can't get people into the system to take jobs is because you can get a lot more money elsewhere," he said.
NSW officials have said they can't feasibly agree to the psychiatrists' demand for a 25 per cent pay increase, which is well above the 10.5 per cent three-year deal offered to all public-sector staff.
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