A Hawke’s Bay doctor often working 70-hour weeks - which include 32-hour weekends more than once a month - says she feels disillusioned about the career she signed up for. Kate Saunders, a senior house officer at Hawke’s Bay Hospital in obstetrics and gynaecology, became a doctor to help people on the frontline. “I wanted to see the change that I was making and I also wanted to help with inequities in New Zealand with Māori people, Pasifika people, and low socio-economic groups.
” She is part of the team of doctors bargaining with Te Whatu Ora for better working conditions for junior doctors. She is also a delegate and executive member of the New Zealand Resident Doctors Association (NZRDA). Saunders and other doctors went on strike on Thursday and Friday, for the second time in two weeks, causing hundreds of appointments and surgeries to be cancelled across the country.
She said they were striking for several reasons, including pay rises they say will put more value on junior doctors and stop a “mass exodus” of doctors to Australia. The 26-year-old said she wanted put a stop to the rostering of double-long days (two 16-hour days in a row), which she does twice every seven weeks. She also wanted to stop the removal of incentives for accelerated advancement, and decrease the cap for pay for registrars who aren’t yet in a training programme from seven years to five years.
“[It] is a confidential process, but Te Whatu Ora has asked us to share that they are taki.
