By RNZ reporters
- Thousands of senior doctors are striking today
- They say without better pay and conditions specialists will head offshore
- Health NZ calls in Employment Relations Authority to settle dispute
- Simeon Brown says doctors should go back to negotiating table.
Health Minister Simeon Brown says striking doctors should return to negotiations, telling reporters in Auckland about 4300 procedures were delayed as a result of the strike.
More than 5000 senior doctors have walked off the job in an unprecedented 24-hour strike over stalled pay and conditions talks, which Health New Zealand says has forced the postponement of more than 4000 planned procedures.
Brown said Health NZ had applied to the Employment Relations Authority for urgent facilitation to resolve the dispute.
"Health New Zealand is committed to reaching a settlement with ASMS," he said.
"Health New Zealand put a credible offer on the table. Unfortunately, the union decided not to put that to its members. They should have. Instead, they decided to continue with the strike, which is causing disruption of care to patients."
He pushed back on union claims the offer was no better than the last one, so there was no need to present it to doctors who were backing the strike.
"Yes, there are challenges, and the offer that was put on the table was designed to help address that," Brown said. "For example, making sure that we could bond doctors into hard to staff regions was a critical part to try and attract and retain staff into those communities such as Nelson and Gisborne."
The government brought in five health targets last year, including shorter wait times for elective treatments and initial specialist assessments. Brown suggested strikes like Thursday's would only make wait lists longer.
"What I've been hearing is that New Zealanders want to see the services and continue to be delivered so we can get on top of the wait lists which we inherited as a government. There are too many New Zealanders already waiting too long, and what happened today is not going to assist with the challenges of getting on top of those wait lists. The wait lists are too long, and this is only going to make them worse and we need these issues to be resolved around the negotiating table."
Asked if the government had done polling or focus grouping on the issue, he dodged the question - saying they were focused on delivering what was campaigned on, like meeting the targets.
He had earlier posted on social media, blaming the striking doctors] for patients' wait times extending further.
But striking senior doctors say losing top medical talent offshore, compromised patient care and growing waiting lists have forced them into industrial action.
The strike in Auckland. Photo: NZ Herald/Mike Scott
On picket lines on Thursday senior doctors remained resolute.
Outside Auckland City Hospital, one of 24 pickets nationwide, Dr Deralie Flower, a gynaecologist-obstetrician at the hospital, said she was striking for pay rates that would keep her colleagues in the country.
"In the gynaecology speciality - these are specialist cancer surgeons. We need 17 in our country, we have six-and-a-half. In Auckland we have trained five in the last six years and four of them have gone to Australia.
"We have kept one."
Senior doctors' union, the Association of Salaried Medical Specialists, has rejected a pay offer Health NZ says is fair and reasonable.
It would increase base pay between about $8000 and $29,000, depending on experience.
Striking senior doctors RNZ has spoken to say they are after more than a pay bump - they want better conditions.
Middlemore Hospital emergency doctor Sylvia Boys said her days were full of heartbreak caused by under resourcing.
"We see things that shouldn't happen, due to long waits [and] care that hasn't been provided - having to treat people in corridors, having people with back pain who can't even get a hard plastic chair in the waiting room because they're all full."
Braving Wellington's gales, Andrew Davies, a respiratory and sleep physician, said he wanted workforce gaps filled.
"We've got vacant jobs we're not allowed to advertise. It's lies they're not getting rid of frontline staff," he said.
"The job is technically there on paper, but if you don't advertise the job you're not going to fill it. In our department we've waited months and months and months to fill something.
"You don't just get a doctor from abroad next week. It takes six months for them to come."
The doctor's strike in Wellington. Photo: RNZ/Ruth Hill
Filling those jobs would bring relief for neurologist Maas Mollenhauer, who said he could not get access to the tests he needed to provide care for patients.
"I've seen patients that I sent for urgent imaging, but they didn't receive it, and then I got an email from one of my colleagues who was on call telling me that that patient had rocked up in the emergency department and basically the front half of their skull was full of brain tumour.
"That's the sort of impact that I'm talking about."
Dunedin Hospital consultant anaesthetist Gonzalo Millan regularly received job offers encouraging him to move abroad for at least double pay.
He can see why younger specialists leave.
"At the top salary scale of New Zealand specialist doctors you're just reaching what you are starting at at any state in Australia."
He was concerned about a future with empty hospitals because the government was not ensuring there was a well-paid, well-looked-after workforce to staff them.
"Building a hospital is just a bunch of machines and equipment. Without doctors and nurses and all the healthcare staff, it's completely useless," Millan said.
Also feeling the effects of doctors heading overseas is Palmerston North anaesthetist Terasa Bulger.
"I'm involved in the recruitment process and when I interview doctors from overseas one of them asked me if it was a charity hospital when he heard what the salary offering was.
"It's just impossible to keep doctors on our shores. No Australian or New Zealand-trained doctors apply to work at our hospital any more."
Maeve Hume-Nixon at the doctor's strike in Wellington. Photo: RNZ/Ruth Hill
In Hamilton, cardiologist Mark Davis attracted plenty of supporting toots from passing motorists.
He said if there were not enough doctors, waiting lists would keep growing, as would patients' problems.
"Our waiting list for echocardiography is 7500 people. Some work I'd done a wee while ago suggested that of all those people who have heart ultrasounds, we find important trouble in 60 percent of those people.
"That's 7500 people with that sort of pathology that we're not doing studies on."
Brown is critical of the strike action.
"Health New Zealand is committed to reaching a settlement with ASMS and has applied to the Employment Relations Authority for facilitation as the next step to resolve this.
"I urge the ASMS union to return to the negotiation table so a deal can be stuck and patients can get the care that they need."
Brown said the strike had caused disruption - about 4300 operations were to be rescheduled - and the Health NZ offer addressed the union's important concerns.
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