‘Pretty serious’ situation for patients as young doctors strike over pay cuts

The disruption to patient care due to a national strike by junior doctors borders on unsafe, says an experienced doctor.

Resident medical officers (junior doctors) picketed outside hospitals in eight major centers on Tuesday morning in protest at a proposed pay cut for trainees in psychiatry, radiation oncology, pathology, public health and general medicine.

While Health New Zealand/Te Whatu Ora had offered most junior doctors a 20 per cent pay rise, doctors in those selected specialties would take a 12 per cent pay cut.

Te Whatu Ora clinical director Richard Sullivan said the country’s emergency departments remained open and the safety and wellbeing of patients was the top priority during the 24-hour strike.

However, a source within Waikato Hospital told RNZ it was not normal and the strike had brought huge ramifications for patients.

The chief doctor, who did not want to be named, said it was very worrying that officials appeared to be minimizing the impact on patients by implying that “there was no significant disruption to services and that almost everything is going as normal.”

“Certainly in Waikato, there are many elective services canceled today – clinics, surgery, day stay procedures, etc.,” they said.

“And while I can only speak for my department, we are severely understaffed by SMOs (senior medical officers) for emergency services and virtually all elective work has been cancelled.

“So it’s actually quite serious, and if the attack planned for next week goes ahead, it will be worse. I would dare say bordering on unsafe.”

Sullivan did not address concerns in Waikato, but said the impact of the strike on planned procedures varied by hospital, depending on the number of New Zealand Resident Doctors Association (NZRDA) members in each area.

“In areas with larger numbers of NZRDA members, a small number of surgeries and procedures for high-risk cases have been carried out today and non-postponable and other scheduled cases have been postponed and will be rescheduled.

“In other areas with fewer NZRDA members there have been fewer disruptions and more procedures can be carried out. However, this is still limited by the overall availability of staff.”

He said young doctors were a “vital and valuable part of the healthcare workforce, and we are proposing a very significant investment to resolve the NZRDA collective agreement”.

The proposed average wage increase was 18 percent, he said.

“We have guaranteed that no current OMR will receive a pay cut under this offer.

“We are very focused on resolving this negotiation so we can avoid further disruption to patients and the healthcare system as a whole.”

Mr Sullivan said Te Whatu Ora’s facilitation application had been accepted by the Employment Relations Authority.

“We encourage the union to accept the authority’s recommendation that it withdraw its current strike notices as an act of good faith due to the facilitation process.”

A junior doctor called Minesha, who RNZ spoke to on the picket line outside Waikato Hospital, said it was difficult to strike knowing the impact on patients.

“I’m starting as a pediatric surgery registrar, so next week, Thursday or Friday, when we go on strike again, I would just start work and have to be here on strike for two days.

“It’s hard to do that. It’s nerve-wracking to have to leave when we know there’s so much going on and our patients really need us, but this is really important for us to have a future as doctors.”

Natalie, a medical registrar at Waikato Hospital who also took part in the picket, said the entire service at the main tertiary hospital was forced to change during the day, with most of the hospital’s 300 to 400 junior doctors on strike, because “We are such an undervalued but integral part of the hospital.”

“We were just going through the list and there was no coverage anywhere; there weren’t many (young) doctors left in the hospital.

“So a lot of services had to be suspended and I think, although that’s terrible for one day, it just shows how important we are and how we should be valued for what we do in the hospital.”

Waikato Resident Doctors Association representative Dr Visharn Sathiyakumar said target specialties were already experiencing labor shortages and he was concerned about access to treatment, particularly for cancer patients, if radiation oncology students they were leaving.

“I know cancer in New Zealand gets a lot of attention, but when it comes to specialist care, historically it hasn’t always received as much support…especially when it comes to medical training pathways.

“We currently have a shortage of specialists in our department and throughout the country, where waiting times are getting longer, there are entire machines (we use radiotherapy machines to treat cancer, which are multi-million dollar machines) that we cannot use because we cannot we have I don’t have enough people to staff them.

“And in this situation, offering a pay cut to this class of apprentices I think is going to worsen that inequity.”

He was concerned about the trickle-down effect of a pay cut on resident medical doctors (RMOs) who were already burned out and considering leaving for Australia.

The same applies to general medicine, where there were serious shortages across the country and waits of weeks to see a GP.

“It’s the pay cut that’s hard to take, regardless of the fact that you’re losing all these people and you’re telling us that we’re not really valued.”

The roughly 2,500 strikers made up about half the workforce of junior doctors, who joined forces for the strike because around 600 positions were lined up for pay cuts.

Psychiatry registrar Sarah Hanson was picketing with about 50 doctors outside Wellington Hospital. Her specialty was one where pay cuts were planned, which she said was very unfair given that there were already shortages.

“I have colleagues who are unsure if they can continue on the training program because they have families to care for, so it is a very real threat to our staff retention and recruitment.”

Although they were called young doctors, some of the strikers had more than ten years of experience and would soon become specialists. Others had just finished medical school.

Jamie Hogg worked in mental health and said some trainee GPs would also receive a share despite also facing shortages.

“Do we want to be the training ground for Australia? No, I don’t think so, I think we want to keep New Zealand trainees in the country and value ourselves.”

If the two sides could not reach an agreement next week, a second two-day strike was planned starting on May 16.