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Media Statements

25 June 2007

MidCentral Senior Doctor Stopwork Meeting Confirmed

“The date of the senior doctor stopwork meeting in the MidCentral District Health Board has been confirmed as part of the unprecedented national stopwork meetings over the impasse in the national collective agreement negotiations with the 21 DHBs,” said Mr Ian Powell, Executive Director of the Association of Salaried Medical Specialists, today.  This is not strike action and emergency cover will continue to be provided.

“The MidCentral DHB has been formally notified that the two-hour stopwork meeting will be held on Friday 3 August commencing at 10am in Palmerston North.”

“The impasse is over the failure of the DHBs to recognise the severity of New Zealand’s increasing difficulty in recruiting and retaining quality senior doctors.  MidCentral has for some time found it difficult to recruit senior doctors.  Furthermore, Australia is aggressively attempting to attract MidCentral’s own senior doctors across the Tasman by offering significantly superior terms and conditions of employment.”

“The DHB has deliberately been given much more notice than the legal two week requirement in order that DHBs will not schedule operations and clinics during these periods of time so that patient inconvenience is minimised and as much as possible no patient faces the cancellation of scheduled appointments or procedures,” concluded Mr Powell.

Ian Powell
EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR

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