Profession Alarmed About DHB Industrial Climate

PAN PROFESSIONAL MEDICAL FORUM

Attention: Health or Industrial Reporter

Media Statement for Immediate Release, Thursday 26 April 2007

Medical Profession Alarmed About Deteriorating Industrial Climate in DHBs

“The medical profession is alarmed about the deteriorating industrial climate in district health boards,” said Professor Phil Bagshaw, Convenor of the Pan Professional Medical Forum, today. The medical organisations that make up the membership of the Forum represent almost 100% of working doctors in New Zealand and include the Council of Medical Colleges, NZMA, ASMS and NZRDA.

“New Zealand is facing a very serious doctor recruitment and retention problem. In some parts of the country this has become a crisis. The trends are most evident in provincial New Zealand. If allowed to continue it will spread to the larger centres where there are already signs of this. New Zealand is losing too many of the doctors we train making us increasingly dependent on overseas trained doctors.”

“The adversarial industrial climate is compounding our serious recruitment and retention problems. It is causing low morale among our well trained doctors and it risks driving them away. Many of them are now looking seriously at Australia where the employment conditions are much superior.”

Rather than driving doctors away from New Zealand we need to create a climate that retains the doctors we train and recruit,” concluded Professor Bagshaw.

ENDS

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