Strike cover doctors get $200 an hour

Senior doctors are being paid $200 an hour - more than triple their average hourly rate - for working weeknights and at the weekend during the junior doctors' national strike.

District health boards agreed to the rate with the senior doctors' union solely for this five-day strike.

Association of Salaried Medical Specialists executive director Ian Powell yesterday confirmed the $200-an-hour payment to senior doctors working week-nights or weekends when they would not normally do so.

If on call but not at work, they received $75 an hour. On strike weekdays, specialists qualified for up to $400 a day extra if the strike increased the intensity of their normal work.

The extra payments, negotiated especially for this strike, were not excessive "in these circumstances".

"Senior doctors are working extraordinary hours at the moment. They are doing things they would either not have done for many years or not done at all," Dr Powell said.

"It's placing considerable burden and stress on them. They are the ones that carry the medical and legal responsibility if anything goes wrong."

Last night brought no clear sign of an end to the dispute, with new outbursts of rhetoric from both sides.

The lone bright ray was the 2400-member union's agreement to the employers' request to meet today, before a mediator, following the collapse of talks last Thursday once the strike by about 2000 junior doctors had started.

On Friday, Resident Doctors' Association general secretary Deborah Powell hinted further strike action might be under consideration. Last night she said the union had not served the required 14-day notice of another strike.

"There will be a negotiation [today] of some description."

Boards' advocate Nigel Murray said the union needed to front up and be honest if it planned another strike, action that would disrupt treatment for thousands more patients and, if soon, would snatch from public hospitals the chance to recover.

Hospitals continued to report they were quiet, indicating the public had heeded the call to avoid going to emergency departments where possible.

Wairarapa Health Board chief executive David Meates said the boards did not yet know whether pay costs during the strike - strikers are not paid - would be higher or lower than normal.

He said one task senior doctors could face during the strike that they might not regularly perform was taking blood samples - something often done by junior doctors - although specialists were not working outside their legally defined scopes of practice.

WHAT NEXT?

* District health boards and union to meet today, with a mediator.

* Striking doctors return to work after 7am tomorrow.