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Pay rates up to 75 per cent higher in Australia are sucking junior doctors across the Tasman at an increasing and alarming rate, including those in advanced training, their union says.
The Resident Doctors Association yesterday released comparisons showing Australian salaries are from 12 to 75 per cent higher than New Zealand's.
The union, which is negotiating with district health boards for what its national secretary, Deborah Powell, calls a "significant" pay rise, says the disparities are deepening New Zealand's medical workforce woes.
"The crisis just gets worse and worse," Dr Powell said. "The DHBs prefer to stick their heads in the sand and hope no one notices, rather than dealing with what is obviously a crisis on our hands."
But the health boards said the union's comparison was flawed and implied its release was to strengthen the union's bargaining position.
Dr Powell said the union normally lost 300 to 400 members a year when they qualified as hospital specialists or GPs. But this year it had lost an additional 500 who had not completed their post-graduate training.
This reinforces a trend detected by the senior doctors' union of newly qualified specialists leaving for Australia.
Dr Powell said up to 30 doctors who had completed their undergraduate studies this year had gone straight to Australia to work.
The two medical schools' final-year classes usually have about 320 students in total.
Medical Council chairman Professor John Campbell said the departing graduates might have been international or Australian students who wanted to work in their own countries.
DHBs spokesman David Meates said the 30 cited by Dr Powell had responded to "other job offers" before completing the process of sequential applications to New Zealand hospitals.
"This year is the first year we've seen that."
Dr Powell, however, said it had happened in 2000, but had been rectified - temporarily - by increasing pay and allowances to bring incomes closer to those in Australia.
But New Zealand had slipped further behind, while Australia had sought to be competitive in the international market for doctors.
A mid-year report by DHBs predicted house-officer vacancies would approach 40 to 50 per cent in Auckland by November, "and these numbers are mirrored in some hospitals throughout New Zealand".
When asked about current shortages, Mr Meates said: "There are certainly a range of gaps around the country. Most of those gaps are being filled with locums."
He said the pay differences appeared misleadingly large when shown in a single currency. It was fairer to compare salaries in each country's currency, because an Australian dollar bought a similar amount in Australia as a New Zealand dollar in New Zealand.
Total pay should have been compared, because New Zealand junior doctors earned considerably more than the 40-45 hour rate used by the union for its comparison.
* BRITISH DOCTORS NOT KEEN TO MOVE
A bid to recruit British doctors has fallen well short of the target of up to 200, with only between 25 and 30 signing up.
However, district health boards are still pleased with the results of the raid on British hospitals.
Facing dire shortages in some areas, district health boards clubbed together to hunt for 160 junior doctors and 40 GPs in Britain during June and July, in addition to their individual recruiting efforts.
The boards' spokesman David Meates said that to cover the costs of the recruiting exercise, it was necessary to hire six to eight junior doctors.
However, 25 to 30 had been recruited, many of whom had already arrived in New Zealand.
