Hospital reassures public

Wairarapa Hospital management is reassuring people that all services are go ? if a bit restricted ? during the junior doctors' strike due to start at 7am tomorrow.
Senior doctors will be working the wards and the emergency department while their junior counterparts strike for better working conditions and more pay.
Wairarapa Hospital's eight junior doctors down their stethoscopes at 7am tomorrow for the first national strike by junior doctors in New Zealand's history.
Unlike other hospitals, the Wairarapa Hospital management has decided not to call on local GPs to see if they can help out.
"We have regular assistance from our GPs anyway who help fill rosters, and there is enough senior hospital staff to fill in the gaps during the strike," hospital spokeswoman Jill Stringer said.
All elective surgery has been postponed for the next five days, affecting around 130 people throughout the region.
Ms Stringer said it's hoped every one of these people have been notified either by telephone or letter.
Outpatient services at Wairarapa Hospital would be "severely restricted" during the strike and people are asked to consider either ringing the national Health Line service or to see their GP before heading to hospital.
Two clinics, which will continue at the hospital, are for fractures and colposcopy (cervical checks), both using visiting consultants.
The team of eight Wairarapa doctors are part of 2500 around New Zealand who have resorted to striking after they say "endless negotiations" with health board management about their long hours of work and rates of pay have got them nowhere.
Health Minister Pete Hodgson appealed yesterday to both sides to resolve their dispute without a strike.
He told Parliament the DHBs had told him more than 10,000 patients would have their appointments or operations postponed if the strike went ahead.
"I regret that. I urged both parties, if they can see the possibility of a way forward, to resolve this before the strike begins on Thursday," he said.
"If the strike proceeds ? and that seems to be distinctly possible ? then of course all life-saving procedures will occur nonetheless because the law requires that."