Strike decision not one taken lightly
THERE is no such thing as an ‘‘average’’ working day for Dunedin Hospital house officer Rosa Tobin Stickings.
‘‘On a day shift we start between 7.30am and 8.30, and in theory we finish around 4.30pm,’’ she said.
‘‘But all it takes is a big acute intake of patients that day for you to stay beyond then, or for a patient to get so sick before the end of a shift that you feel you have to stay and help — it’s the nature of the job.’’
A 15hour shift is not unusual, and meal breaks are usually short and snatched between seeing patients — often they are skipped entirely.
Today Dr Tobin Stickings and colleagues who are members of the Resident Doctors Association union walk off the job in their third nationwide 48hour strike this year.
It is not a decision she and they took lightly, she said.
‘‘We do not like to walk away from the job — we want to be in the hospital looking after patients.’’
The dispute between the RDA — of which Dr Tobin Stickings is a local organiser — and district health boards, centres on proposed rostering changes.
DHBs want to vary existing ‘‘safe staffing’’ rosters to allow greater flexibility, while the RDA bitterly opposes any alteration to work conditions.
‘‘If you started at 7.30am and you are still there at 11.30 at night, that’s a long stretch,’’ Dr Tobin Stickings said.
‘‘After that 4.30pm cutoff, you are the only house officer looking after a whole chunk of patients, and you can be run off your feet — and then you have to be back by 7.30 to do it all again.
‘‘We know that healthcare is a 24hour business, people get sick at all hours and you need to have doctors and nurses around, but we want to do that in a way which is safe for the doctors and safe for the patients.’’
The Southern District Health Board — which had to deal with a midwives’ strike and a twohour stopwork by administration staff yesterday — said it was ready for the third strike by RDA members.
‘‘Our hospitals remain open and patients should still come to their scheduled appointment or surgery on those days, unless we have contacted them directly to say their appointment is being rescheduled,’’ chief executive Chris Fleming said.
Mediation talks between the RDA and DHBs resume later this week, but the union has filed notice of a fourth strike, on February 26 and 27.