Senior Doctors Vote to Negotiate Competitive Terms

MEDIA STATEMENT FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE,
SUNDAY 6 DECEMBER 2009

“Senior Doctors Vote to Negotiate Competitive Terms and Conditions of Employment to Help Address Effects of Workforce Crisis”

“Senior doctors voted overwhelmingly last Friday to focus on achieving a pathway to competitive terms and conditions of employment in our national collective agreement negotiations with district health boards next year in order to help overcome the detrimental effects of our medical workforce crisis,” said Mr Ian Powell, Executive Director of the Association of Salaried Medical Specialists, today. The current national collective agreement expires on 30 April 2010.

"The adopted resolution stated:

That the Association’s strategic direction for the forthcoming national DHB MECA negotiations be based on the following statement:

That the Association promotes the right of equal access for all New Zealanders to high quality public health services. Both access and quality are threatened by the medical workforce crisis in our district health boards. Critical to resolving this crisis are:

(a) a clear pathway to competitive terms and conditions of employment for senior doctors and dentists;

(b) recognition that district health boards are competing in an Australian medical labour market; and

(c) recognition that the Government is responsible for resolving the crisis.

“The senior doctor workforce in New Zealand is vulnerable and brittle. We train high quality young doctors who then move to greener fields in Australia; we lose too many of our existing specialists to Australia; and we offer greatly inferior salaries when competing against Australia to recruit doctors internationally. As a result many patient services are being held together by a seriously short-staffed and overworked senior medical workforce.”

“This crisis is unsustainable. It threatens the accessibility and quality of patient services. Patients need doctors but patients are being short-changed. They deserve better.”

“While our negotiations are with district health boards, we expect that government will also need to be involved as it has ultimate responsibility. The government is responsible for funding DHBs. But it also has highly commendable objectives which will require increasing the number of senior doctors if they are to be achieved. These include introducing comprehensive clinical leadership and increasing the role of senior doctors in the training of resident (junior) doctors.”

“These negotiations will be challenging. Our Annual Conference increased the membership subscription to better resource us for this campaign. But with goodwill and if we, the DHBs and government adopt a ‘can do’ approach we can get there” concluded Mr Powell.

ENDS

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