Senior doctors pass no confidence vote in DHBs

Bay of Plenty doctors have said they have no confidence in the district health boards' industrial relations strategy for the health workforce.

Today's stopwork meeting involving doctors from the Bay of Plenty passed the no confidence resolution unanimously. It reflects the short-sighted negative industrial relations strategy of DHBs to all health staff, not just senior doctors.

The doctors also expressed grave concern about the lack of recognition of the serious crisis affecting the ability to recruit and retain doctors in the Bay of Plenty and its effect on the right of Bay of Plenty patients to receive the care and treatment they deserve.

The meeting is the fifth in a series of unprecedented stopwork meetings that started on Tuesday. The nationwide meetings have been called to discuss action after negotiations with the DHBs dragged on for a year. Senior doctors say that wages and conditions of work have led to grave difficulties in recruiting and retaining specialists in the hospital system.

Association of Salaried Medical Specialists Executive Director Ian Powell says all of have been very well attended and have all given very clear messages to the DHB that there is a major problem.

"All the meetings so far have been overwhelmingly in support of holding a postal ballot of members on taking lawful national industrial action; a move senior doctors have never before taken. In some meetings this support has been unanimous."

Ian Powell says the Bay of Plenty senior doctors unanimously supported this resolution and another to reject the DHBs' proposal from July 5.

The next stopwork meeting will involve senior doctors at the Hutt Valley DHB on Monday. Other meetings in the second week of national stopwork meetings will be at Counties Manukau, Capital & Coast, Ashburton, Southland, Greymouth and Hawkes Bay.

[ends]

© Scoop Media