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Media Statements

28 June 2007

Otago Senior Doctor Stopwork Meeting Confirmed

“The date of the senior doctor stopwork meeting in the Otago 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 Otago DHB has been formally notified that there will be a two-hour stopwork meeting on Wednesday 8 August commencing at 10am.  Around 90-100 senior doctors are expected to 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.  Otago is vulnerable to losing its senior doctors to aggressive recruitment campaigns from Australia seeking to attract them across the Tasman by offering significantly superior terms and conditions of employment.  The Chair of the Otago DHB has already acknowledged that senior doctor shortages were about 30-40% higher than they should be.”

“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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