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Media Statements

27 June 2007

Bay of Plenty and Lakes Senior Doctor Stopwork Meetings Confirmed

“The dates of three senior doctor stopwork meetings in the Bay of Plenty and Lakes District Health Boards have 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.

“Both DHBs have been formally notified that there will be two 2-hour stopwork meeting on Friday 20 July commencing at 10am in Tauranga, Thursday 9 August commencing at 9am in Whakatane, and Thursday 9 August commencing at 2pm in Rotorua.  Up to around 140 senior doctors will be involved.”

“The impasse in negotiations is caused by the failure of the DHBs to recognise the severity of New Zealand’s increasing difficulty in recruiting and retaining quality senior doctors.  Both the Bay of Plenty and Lakes DHBs are particularly vulnerable to aggressive recruitment campaigns from Australia seeking to attract 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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