Hospital strikes threaten surgery

Thousands of hospital patients from Nelson to Northland face potential chaos when radiographers strike for five days this month.

Radiographers have given notice of strike action at nine district health boards, including Auckland, Waitemata, Waikato and Wellington's Capital and Coast.

Members of the Association of Professional and Executive Employees (Apex) intend to strike from midday on Monday, May 23 to midday on Friday, May 27.

In separate action, radiographers at the Counties Manukau board, represented by the Nurses Organisation, intend to strike for five hours on Tuesday May 24.

Radiographers' work - x-rays, mammograms and scanning by CT, MRI and ultrasound machines - is at the heart of modern medicine.

Hospitals affected by the five-day strike are planning how to cope and trying to arrange help from unaffected public hospitals and from private hospitals and clinics.
Everything possible will be done to maintain emergency services, but elective surgery and outpatient clinics will be hit hard, depending on their degree of need for radiology. Letters advising patients are being drafted.

Waitemata's chief executive, Dwayne Crombie, said yesterday that it would have to cancel all elective (non-urgent) and outpatient appointments if the strike proceeded.

"It would have a major impact on our ability to handle acute patients."

Auckland board spokeswoman Dr Margaret Wilsher said elective and outpatient services would be significantly reduced or closed before the strike to ensure patient numbers were as low as possible.

After the last radiographers' strike, for six days at Auckland Hospital in 2002, health chiefs said patients' lives were put at risk and initiated a law change that could force unions to provide life-saving cover during strikes.

The latest radiographers' action is part of a surge of industrial muscle-flexing at hospitals. Junior doctors threatened a strike last year over long working hours and health board nurses talked of doing so before settling their historic "pay jolt", which immediately became the benchmark for other health unions.

Most registered nurses and midwives won pay rises amounting to about 20 per cent by July next year.

The Nurses Organisation now wants pay parity for 5000 primary care nurses mainly employed by GPs. It is also pushing the Government for a large funding increase in aged residential and home care.

The parties in the Apex dispute were in talks before a mediator yesterday. The radiographers' minimum base salaries vary between $30,000 and $35,000. Apex wants this to rise to about $40,000 and an increase for experienced staff.

At Counties Manukau, the starting rate for a graduate, after completing the required three-year degree, is $38,617. Those at the top of the five-year automatic grading scale get $46,900. Extra payments are made for overtime, shift work and call-backs.

An organiser for the Nurses Organisation, Mark Lennox, said it wanted rises at Counties of between about 4 and 6.5 per cent, depending on grade, in an 18-month agreement. The board had offered annualised rises averaging 2 per cent for an 18-month deal.

Staff turnover was 20 per cent this year, he said. Experienced staff were going overseas or to private clinics, where they were better off.

He said the 50 staff had limited their initial strike to five hours, to minimise disruption to patients, but would escalate their action if necessary.

What radiographers do

* They operate machines that take medical images: x-rays, mammograms, and CT, MRI and ultra-sound scans.

* These images are at the heart of modern medicine, for diagnosis and for some procedures, like taking tissue samples in breast cancer tests.

* Radiation therapists, who treat cancer, are not involved in the strikes.

* For the radiographers taking action, base salary rates range from about $30,000 to $46,900 and differ between hospitals.