Junior doctors unsure whether to seek Queensland placements

Junior doctors unsure whether to seek Queensland placements #qldpol #smoqld #keepourdoctors

Doctors will join public sector workers in a union planned rally outside Parliament House on Tuesday afternoon, as the dispute between the state’s senior specialists and the government rolls on.

The Together Union has organised ‘we won’t be fooled day’ rallies in Townsville, Cairns Bundaberg, Mackay and Brisbane, protesting the politician pay rise, the on-going doctor’s dispute and the “stripping away public servant’ wages and conditions” via its modernisation policy.

It comes after union officials met with doctors in Brisbane on Monday night to discuss “the next step”.

“What we need to do is keep the pressure up on the government through the collective campaign,” Together Union state secretary Alex Scott said.

“We’ll keep going until we see something of substance.”

Meanwhile young doctors have taken to Twitter to question health minister Lawrence Springborg, via #DrContractFacts, about what the dispute means for them.

The deadline for the Royal Australian College of Surgeon’s training positions is Friday. Some junior doctors have begun to question whether they should preference Queensland, “given the uncertainty”.

“So not only is the future of current training registrars up in the air, but we are likely to experience an exodus of potential trainees,” one said.

Previously the government said junior doctors’ ability to access training in Queensland would not be threatened, “unless militant unions seeking the resignation of senior doctors begin an industrial campaign of mass resignation”.

Mr Springborg said his department had addressed the key concerns of doctors by adding an addendum to the contract, which included a ministerial directive ensuring the Health Director-General could not make changes to the contracts that would disadvantage doctors, ensuring health and hospital services’ consulted with doctors before changing rosters or transferring staff and access to the Queensland Industrial Relations Commission if doctors believed they had been dismissed unfairly, as defined by the act.

Mr Springborg is expected to put those changes through parliament this week.

But he has ruled out changes to the industrial relations act, which doctors had requested.

While senior medical officers continue to consider their future, junior doctors said the stress of the situation “was making an impact”.

One junior doctor, who decided to preference Queensland when applying for training positions “purely for family and support network reasons” said the current climate “has added an element to this process, which just shouldn’t be there”.

“The uncertainty and the stress has been amplified a lot by the current climate and what has been going on with my senior colleagues and their issues,” he said.

“The threat of a lot of those senior doctors leaving has really made this process [applying for training positions] very stressful.”