Doctors take up placards or shovels
Some junior doctors went on the picket lines yesterday while others swapped scalpels for shovels and got stuck into a garden.
Auckland hospital’s Emergency Department house officer Dr Christine Vanderboor and 20 of her colleagues picketed outside the hospital yesterday morning as part of a 48-hour national strike.
The strike action came after the New Zealand Resident Doctors’ Association (RDA) and District Health Boards (DHBs) failed to reach an agreement during mediation last week.
The union is trying to renew the resident doctors’ national collective agreement – which sets out the terms and conditions of their employment – that expired on February 28, 2018.
Vanderboor said that over the past year the union had been trying to negotiate a fair deal for junior doctors.
‘‘Every response we have had [from the DHBs] has basically been clawbacks and the clawbacks would take away the protection of our union,’’ she said.
Vanderboor said they were fighting for safer working conditions. She said it wasn’t uncommon for junior doctors to work 15-16 hour days, usually starting an hour earlier and finishing an hour later.
In Nelson, junior doctors chose to pick up garden tools during the strike over working conditions. Nelson Hospital resident medical officer Alexander Hosking and around 20 of his colleagues were busy shifting mulch, oiling benches and doing other tasks at Founders Park yesterday.
The group said they didn’t want to take strike action, but they wanted to fight to maintain fair working conditions. They approached Volunteer Nelson to see if there were any organisations in the community that could do with help.
An Auckland DHB spokeswoman said significant contingency planning had been undertaken for the strike period to ensure patients’ safety.
‘‘We are providing emergency and life-preserving services throughout the strike.
‘‘This includes all acute services and those services defined as life-preserving (such as some cancer treatments). Our message to the public is – if you need our care, we are here.’’