KEY POINTS:
Striking radiographers are investigating incidents where they believe they were called in to work to provide non-essential services, in breach of the agreement they have with their health board bosses.
About 260 radiographers from seven district health boards (DHBs) walked off the job on Friday for a 10-day strike in their quest for pay parity with better paid colleagues from other districts.
They agreed to return to work to provide "life-preserving" services only but their union spokeswoman, Deborah Powell, national secretary of the Association of Professionals and Executive Employees (Apex), today told NZPA they were investigating alleged breaches of that agreement at the Canterbury DHB,
Dr Powell said about eight callbacks were under investigation, believed to have been requested for services that would not come under the category of life-preserving.
No other DHBs had called on radiographers unnecessarily.
"Only in Canterbury -- they've caused some issues there and we're investigating.
"I'm not going to go into details about it."
Dr Powell did not know how many times in total Canterbury radiographers had been called on during the strike.
They are due to return to work for one day on Friday, which is a public holiday in Canterbury.
Dr Powell said radiographers around the country, as dedicated health workers, were finding it difficult to abandon their jobs and it was a financial hardship not being paid.
She said Apex was happy to talk to DHBs about a return to work.
"That would depend on whether or not the DHBs have anything to say."
CDHB has denied it made inappropriate callbacks.
The approximately 20 callbacks over the weekend were for people with problems such as severe infections, chest or abdominal trauma and suspected pneumonia.
Emergency medicine specialist Mike Ardagh told The Press newspaper the requests were worthy.
"We would have been doing patients a great disservice if we didn't request (those images)."
Meanwhile, sick people are still turning up at hospital emergency departments around the country despite a plea for them to visit their general practitioners or emergency doctors.
The DHBs made their plea to help ease the burden during the strike at Southland, Otago, Hutt Valley, Lakes (Rotorua), Bay of Plenty, Canterbury and Tairawhiti DHBs.
Anne Aitcheson, national co-ordinator of contingency planning for the DHBS, told NZPA that DHBs were generally finding that their emergency department numbers have not gone down.
"Possibly there are patients there who could go to the GP and that would certainly be helpful given the scenario that we are facing," she said.
"The opposite side of that, of course, is that we also don't want people not to seek medical help, so we don't want them sitting at home for the next 10 days waiting for everything to return to normal and then getting sicker."
At Southland Hospital emergency department clinical director Dr Martin Watts said a review of the department's activities after the first weekend of the strike showed a "disappointing" number of attendances by people who should have visited their GP or the Urgent Doctor Service in Invercargill.
"People with minor injuries that could easily be dealt with by a general practitioner are still arriving in the emergency department."
Southland DHB chief operating officer Lexie O'Shea said that staff had coped well with the weekend, but she was concerned to ensure that the public remained aware that the strike still had a week more to run.
The message was reiterated by Lakes DHB and CDHB.
- NZPA
