THE DOCTOR
KEY POINTS:
Junior doctors are going on strike today because they care about patients and want to stop the "implosion" of the health system, says the president of their union, Dr Deralie Flower.
More than 2000 Resident Doctor's Association members plan to strike from 7am until 7am on Thursday, causing severe disruption in public hospitals.
Services are largely being restricted to acute and emergency care. Nurses, some junior doctors and especially senior doctors will carry this workload.
Health Minister David Cunliffe in the House on Thursday attacked the association and particularly its general secretary Deborah Powell over what he called their unrealistic pay demands.
He said the average first-year junior doctor earned $88,000 and other benefits which amounted to a package many workers would consider reasonable.
The union says the first-year salary of new graduates, following six years at university, is around $70,000 for a 60-hour week, which is the average.
Dr Flower and other union members wrote to Mr Cunliffe, criticising his comments. Some said they felt insulted and the minister was clearly ignorant of the crisis in the medical workforce, in which many junior staff were quitting permanent employment at district health boards to go to Australia into locum work, potentially reducing the number of future GPs and specialists.
The Government says there is no crisis.
One member said that of 51 house officer jobs at his or her unnamed hospital, 12 were filled by locums and 13 were vacant. Locums earned at least $75 an hour - more than three times the rate of a first-year house officer - and could "pick and choose their hours", while permanent house officers were "treated with contempt" and had to cover the gaps of unfilled positions.
Dr Flower said junior doctors "do give a damn about patients. That's precisely why we are prepared to fight, to be unpopular, to take a risk, to ensure that this country has a health service in the future.
"Our other option was to do nothing, accept the DHBs' offer, and watch the exodus of doctors continue.
"We are going on strike because we are not prepared to sit back and observe the implosion of our health system."
The union yesterday withdrew its "compromise" claim, made during mediation talks last week, which it said would have increased pay rates by 21.25 per cent over three years, and reverted to its previous salary claim of three rises of 10 per cent over three years.
The health boards said the withdrawn claim would have cost them an extra 30 per cent, and the reinstated one an extra 40 per cent, once additional changes in the claims were included.
The DHBs have offered two rises of 4 per cent for a two-year deal.
Junior doctors will not picket during the strike, but many intend to donate blood - "to give something back to the community", said union national executive member Amin Sheikh.
THE PATIENT
Matthew Tremain was to have major surgery to rebuild is worn-out right hip today, but the operation has been delayed by the junior doctors' strike.
The operation was to start at 7.30am, half an hour after the doctors walk off the job for their 48 hours of industrial action.
Mr Tremain had arranged time away from his job, was emotionally prepared for the operation and had stopped taking the painkilling drugs that help him to sleep and get him through the day.
"Now I have to go through the same again. It's tough," the 30-year-old married father of Dannemora in south-east Auckland, said yesterday.
Many of the estimated 8000 patients nationally whose outpatient appointment or elective surgery has been postponed because of the strike will have to wait to be given a new booking, but at least Mr Tremain, a manager at magazine publisher ACP Media, has had his operation rescheduled.
The Counties Manukau District Health Board has booked it for next Tuesday, when health services will be cranking back up to full speed after a week devoted mostly to just acute and emergency services.
When told the base salary for a 60-hour week ranged from about $70,000 a year for a first-year house officer, to around $120,000 for a year-10 specialist-in-training, Mr Tremain said the strike was probably not warranted.
"It sounds like a pretty good income.
"I would have thought that in public health people do it also to give something back."
INFO FOR PATIENTS
* Public hospitals want to keep their emergency departments for genuine emergencies.
* Auckland's public hospitals and community maternity units will accept women in labour.
* People with non-urgent illnesses or injuries are urged to see a GP or phone Healthline, 0800 611116
* For local details, phone your district health board: Auckland 3670-000, Waitemata 0800 809-342, Counties Manukau, 0800 277-1661, Waikato 0800 100-178, Northland 09 430-4100, Bay of Plenty 07 579-8000, Lakes 07 348
