Senior doctors to hold four stopwork meetings

SUNDAY 24 JUNE 2007

“Senior doctors to hold four stopwork meetings in auckland”

“Senior doctors will hold four 2-hour stopwork meetings in the Auckland region,” said Mr Ian Powell, Executive Director of the Association of Salaried Medical Specialists, today. The stopwork meetings are not strike action and emergency cover will continue to be provided.

“These events are part of the unprecedented national stopwork meetings over the impasse in the national collective agreement negotiations with district health boards. These negotiations have being going on for over a year. They have been dominated by a protracted impasse due to the DHBs failure to recognise New Zealand’s vulnerable position in recruiting and retain quality senior doctors. The longer this goes on the more this vulnerability worsens.”

“We are aware that increasing numbers of advanced registrars (junior doctors) in Auckland are looking to leave New Zealand for overseas where terms and conditions of employment are superior and not return.”

“The four meetings are: Waitemata DHB, Tuesday 17 July, 9am (North Shore Hospital) and 2pm (Waitakere Hospital). Counties Manukau DHB, Tuesday 24 July, 1.30pm (Middlemore Hospital). Auckland DHB, Monday 6 August, 1.30pm (Auckland City Hospital).

“Senior doctors have deliberately given the three DHBs much more notice than the legal two week requirement in order that DHBs will not schedule operations and clinics during these periods of time so that patient inconvenience is minimised and, as much as possible, no patient faces the cancellation of scheduled appointments or procedures,” concluded Mr Powell.

ENDS

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