Young doctors to resume bargaining

By MATHEW DEARNALEY

Hospital junior doctors have agreed to return to negotiations today, and were last night understood to be considering prospects for calling off a potentially tumultuous six-day national strike.

Leaders of their union, the Resident Doctors Association, held a marathon meeting in Auckland after an indication from the 21 district health boards that they were ready to make an offer for the first time in almost six months of negotiations.

Formal negotiations are to resume in Wellington this morning, regardless of whether the strike is called off beforehand.

A health industry source not involved in the dispute understood the boards were optimistic the offer would meet concerns about working hours, which the doctors say too often exceed a theoretical maximum of 72 a week.

But hope of a settlement did not distract hospital managers and clinical leaders from pressing ahead with contingency planning for a walkout by more than 2000 doctors from 7am on Tuesday, November 2.

Representatives of the four Auckland and Northland health boards will meet today to develop a regional plan to try to safeguard patients, despite a warning from the senior doctors' union that its members will be hard-pressed to provide enough emergency cover.

Auckland City Hospital already intends postponing non-urgent surgery from next Wednesday unless the strike is called off, to concentrate on clearing acute and emergency cases, and others in the region are considering similar measures.

Hospital operations manager Ngaire Buchanan, the northern region's strike contingency coordinator, said a team of non-striking specialists would be set up to retrieve from other districts babies needing intensive neonatal care.

But she said the Auckland health board would have to ask the junior doctors' union for exemptions to allow their members to continue to work with resuscitation and emergency teams.

The Resident Doctors Association has said emergency cover will be up to senior practitioners to provide, but the Association of Salaried Medical Specialists warns they will have difficulty taking on work which has become unfamiliar to them.

That union is urging its members to meet managers immediately to demand reasonable and safe staffing levels with provisions for adequate rest, meals and payments for extra childcare and transport costs.

Executive director Ian Powell said there was a tendency for managers to get "a little hyped up" during strikes and underestimate risks for which doctors took medical and legal responsibility.

The Nurses Organisation is also concerned about extra demands on its already short-staffed members, whose own pay claims are back under negotiation this week after signs they were ready to hold a national strike.

Mr Powell said his union's national conference would open in Wellington on November 3, regardless of whether a strike began the day before, as leave for 60 to 70 delegates had already been approved and some overseas speakers were already heading there.

The conference is expected to celebrate the settlement last week of his union's first national employment agreement since 1992.

But Mrs Buchanan said her board was looking at all conference and annual leave, and could not rule out cancelling even what had already been granted.