Talks fail to avert junior doctors strike

Tomorrow's junior doctors' strike is set to go ahead after last-minute talks between the doctors and district health boards over reduced working hours failed to break the deadlock.

The junior doctors - including doctors at Whanganui Hospital - plan to strike for 73 hours beginning 7am on Tuesday and finishing the action at 8am on Friday.

The doctors held a strike in October over what they say are unsafe working hours. A junior doctor at Whanganui Hospital told the Wanganui Chronicle during that strike that it was not unusual for junior doctors to work 12 days in a row.

A further strike planned for mid-November was postponed because of the Kaikoura earthquake on November 14.

Deborah Powell from the New Zealand Resident Doctors Association said talks continued last week between the union and the health boards.

"The employers' team who attended bargaining were unable to make an agreement or table an offer. They have to once again report back to the chief executives for further instruction," said Ms Powell.

"In the absence of an offer from the DHBs to settle the multi-employer collective agreement, the strike appears set to go ahead while we wait on the chief executives to make a decision."

She also complained that the Waikato health board was offering resident doctors up to $200 an hour - "a considerably higher rate of pay than normal" - to break the strike and work over the three days.

Whanganui District Health Board's acting chief executive, Brian Walden, said contingency plans were under way in preparation for the strike.

He said the emergency department and acute services would remain open and there would be as many elective services "as can safely be provided".

Anyone whose appointments will be affected by the strike will be contacted directly by the hospital.

During the October strike six surgeries and 38 outpatients clinics were postponed, with orthopaedics, general surgery, paediatrics and obstetrics and gynaecology most affected.

Seventeen of the hospital's doctors went on strike.