Junior Docs Opting Out
By CHISHOLM, Donna
ABOUT ONE in five junior doctors is opting out of the public hospital workforce path to take on locum work paying up to $200,000 a year – almost three times what they would otherwise earn.
But the higher pay rates for junior doctors on “fill in” shifts are blowing hospital budgets and taking hundreds of doctors out of training programmes in much-needed specialties.
The Canterbury District Health Board has just cancelled all leave until August for its 60 house officers because it has 26 vacancies it cannot fill and no relief staff.
The Resident Doctors Association says it will challenge the order, saying the board is treating its staff as commodities and is legally obliged to provide cover.
“It’s self-defeating. These people are working their butts off for 55 hours a week and having to cover for two or three other doctors – what are they going to do? Resign and join the locum pool,” said RDA general secretary Deborah Powell.
About 400 resident doctors have permanently moved into locum work here or overseas in the past 18-24 months, she said. But while Powell expressed concern about the trend, a junior doctor who has left the profession to set up his own medical recruitment company argues that lucrative locum work may be keeping some graduates at home.
Sam Hazledine, managing director of new agency MedRecruit, said he did not believe the exodus would impact on specialist training because many young doctors simply wanted to earn big money for a few years – partly to pay off student loans – before resuming their career path.
“Locuming is not anti-career. It is one way to pay junior doctors better.”
He worked for 18 months as a junior doctor after graduating in 2003 before becoming a locum for two-and-a-half years, earning the money to launch his agency which aimed to match doctors’ lifestyles with their jobs. At 29, he operates his company out of Queenstown.
Powell is about to ballot junior doctors about strike action over the latest round of pay negotiations. She has been urging boards to put some of the $100 million a year they spend on locums into junior doctors’ base salaries. Some boards have doubled their locum spending in just one year.
Powell said of the class of 250 which graduated from medical schools at the end of last year, 10% went immediately to Australia before they even started work here – an almost unprecedented exodus.
A first year junior doctor earns $23 an hour, $25 an hour by the second year.
But as first-year Waikato Hospital doctor Michael Oehley, 24, said in a letter to the NZ Herald last week, when he broke his $61,000 salary into 55-hour weeks, subtracted tax and student loan repayments, “I get about $12 an hour for treating sick people after six years of studying”.
He told the Sunday Star-Times the financial insecurity made him wonder about how New Zealand undervalued its staff.
“We are not money-hungry people – most of us did medicine out of a genuine desire to work with people – but many junior doctors have huge student loans, families to support and mortgages to pay. In a competitive world where other countries offer doctors considerably better pay, and New Zealand itself offers locum rates far superior to normal salaries, is it any surprise that we are leaving the mainstream workforce in large numbers?”
He said locums working alongside him could be earning $75 an hour – or up to $120 in Auckland. “I’ve heard of Australian locums earning over $3000 for a single weekend.”
District Health Boards of NZ chief executive David Meates said while locums could earn more, the work of junior doctors was about developing careers as future specialists or consultants. Their packages had other benefits like superannuation and six weeks’ study leave.
No country had enough doctors to meet its needs, he said.
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(c) 2008 Sunday Star – Times; Wellington, New Zealand. Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning. All rights Reserved.