NZers being put at risk – senior doctors

New Zealanders being put at risk – senior doctors

The health of New Zealanders is being put at risk by the way District Health Boards’ are negotiating with senior doctors over a collective agreement.

That was one of the messages from senior doctors from the Lakes DHB who met today in the last of a series of stopwork meetings being held around the country. The meetings follow a year of unsuccessful negotiations between senior doctors and the DHBs.

Association of Salaried Medical Specialists executive director Ian Powell says the meeting voted unanimously to show no confidence in the DHBs’ industrial relations strategy.

“There was serious concern that the current approach is putting the health of New Zealanders at risk. There is a major problem with retaining and recruitment of senior doctors in our hospitals, and something needs to be done to address this workforce crisis.”

Ian Powell says as with the other 25 meetings the senior doctors from Lakes DHB showed overwhelming support to hold a postal vote of members to decide if lawful industrial action should be taken.

He says over the past four weeks 740 senior specialists have attended the stopwork meetings, with more than 99% voting in favour of rejecting the DHBs’ current offer.

“It is the first time our senior doctors have been involved in stopwork meetings and across the country there is a real feeling of concern and anger over the failure of the DHBs to recognise the serious problems facing our health workforce. Senior doctors are concerned above all about the impact this is having on patients.”

Ian Powell says New Zealand will continue to lose its senior doctors to places such as Australia or private practice unless something is done now.

“Our doctors are getting offered considerably more attractive packages across the Tasman so it is hardly surprising we lost 80 in some 18 months. We can’t afford to keep losing our senior doctors at this rate.”

He says ASMS and its members are hoping that a resolution will be reached soon, with mediation with DHBs scheduled in the next week.

ENDS

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