Queensland doctors threaten mass walkout of public hospital system

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SENIOR doctors are threatening to leave Queensland’s public hospital system en masse over the Newman Government’s decision to force them off a collective agreement and on to individual contracts. 
 
The public hospital specialists have described the contracts as “the single greatest threat to the medical profession in this country”, leaving them open to arbitrary dismissal and enforced shiftwork.

 

Doctors meeting throughout the state have unanimously passed resolutions opposing the contracts, saying they would hurt the public hospital system.

A Prince Charles Hospital memorandum obtained by The Courier-Mail says 80 per cent of the facility’s senior emergency department specialists have indicated they will resign or reduce working hours in the public sector if the contracts go ahead.

 

The memo expresses concern recruitment of emergency specialists from interstate is showing signs of drying up.

Most of the hospital’s radiologists say they are “highly likely to leave” and the intensive care unit is also under threat of doctors heading interstate “in view of the contract situation”.

 

Anger over the contracts has prompted the reformation of what’s known as the “Pineapple Group”, a body of doctors which formed about 10 years ago to lobby the Beattie government over pay and conditions when public hospital wages lagged behind other states, making it difficult to ­attract and retain specialists.

 

Health Minister Lawrence Springborg said the contracts were about increasing transparency and accountability under a system which had been “letting patients down”.

 

He said Auditor-General Andrew Greaves had exposed the way Queensland public hospital doctors were paid as being heavily flawed and a waste of taxpayers’ money.

 

Australian Medical Association federal president Steve Hambleton said doctors were already starting to quit Queensland’s public hospital system over the Newman Government’s “unfair contracts”.


“If 20 per cent of them resign, there’s going to be enormous difficulty in providing services,’’ Dr Hambleton said. “There’ll be longer waits in emergency, there’ll be longer waits for elective surgery, there’ll be less experienced people in the hospital sector.

 

“And there’ll be reduced ability to train the next generation of doctors.”

 

Paediatrician Stephen Withers wrote in the Gold Coast Medical Association’s magazine that the contracts were “changing  the face of medicine in Queensland”.

 

“The contracts may create a seismic shift in the provision of health care which will have a generational effect on the provision of health care for Queenslanders,” he wrote.