Kerre Woodham: The strike wasn't a decision they made lightly

Well, with senior doctors and dentists within our public health system set to strike for a couple of hours this afternoon, you might be thinking this would be a very bad time indeed to have the need to whip up to A&E.  

In actual fact, staffing should probably be better than it normally is on a wet weekend in winter, given how stringent the conditions are before public health staff can actually strike. There are all sorts of protections for the public around staffing levels and as I say, it may not be as bad as trying to get up there on a Friday night.  

It's very, very hard for public health sectors to strike at all, and very difficult for nurses and doctors. It just goes to show how fed up they are doesn't it?   

This is the very first time senior doctors and dentists have chosen to take strike action, Nurses have gone on strike before, but not specialists. Te Whatu Ora says it's frustrated and extremely disappointed that the doctors have rejected what they offered. That was a salary increase of between 7 and 12.9%, but the Association of Salaried Medical Specialists says all very well and good, but that's over 17 months and it's not in line with inflation, we're simply asking, asking them to meet what we claimed, which is reasonable.  

As one of the doctors too said, the system is failing and unless we make a stand, who will? It’s important, it's dramatic. It's not a decision that these specialists have taken lightly. It's not happened before.  

The Association of Salaried Medical Specialists say Te Whatu Ora and the Government are the target of these strikes, not the patients. They say doctors care about their patients, but they've decided the failure to protect the value of their work will only result in more doctors leaving New Zealand or declining to apply for jobs here. Te Whatu Ora already acknowledges we are 1700 senior doctors short across the country. And the Association thinks that's an extremely conservative estimate, they say it's much, much worse. Already, hospitals are critically short staffed, with senior doctors increasingly trying to run services with insufficient senior and junior doctors, nurses and allied health staff. And they say overseas doctors have largely stopped applying for jobs due to pay and the working condition issues.

Anyone who spent any time at all in the public health service recently knows just how tough it is for these professionals to do their jobs. Mike made reference this morning on the Mike Hosking Breakfast to the number of code greys that hospital staff are dealing with, where security has to be called because the patients lost the plot.  

Nurses and doctors are not just dealing with the lack of staff and a shortage of resources, they're dealing with increasingly physically and mentally ill people, who are packed together in a small space for hours while staff do their very, very best.  

Now you might think that doctors earn quite enough. Well, quite frankly, when I'm lying unconscious on an operating table while skilled surgeons have spent 15 to 20 years honing their skills to do their best to improve my quality of life, or even save my life, they can earn what they like.  

Cabinet ministers get more than our senior surgeons and I know who gives a better return on my taxpayer dollar.   

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