The New South Wales government will make an 11th-hour attempt to postpone the mass resignation of the state’s psychiatrists by asking the Industrial Relations Commission to urgently intervene.
With one in three psychiatrist positions in the state already vacant, psychiatrists have been in negotiations with the government for more than 16 months on how to solve the workforce crisis, arguing higher salaries were needed to attract new doctors and retain those currently working in the public system.
More than 200 psychiatrists – representing more than two-thirds of the staff specialists working in the state – intend to resign after the government did not accept their proposed solution of a special levy increasing their pay by 25% in a single year, which would help bring NSW salaries to parity with other states and territories. The resignations are staggered but many that have been tendered named Tuesday as their last day, meaning Wednesday is when many resignations would take effect.
At a press conference held by the doctors’ union on Monday, Dr Pramudie Gunaratne, the chair of the NSW branch of the Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Psychiatrists, said: “I just want to say this to all patients and communities: psychiatrists have been fighting for you for years.
“Our mental health system is failing you, and we have been begging this government to do something – anything – to bring our workforce back so we can provide our patients and communities with the care that they need instead of burying our heads in the sand and continuing to prop up a broken system,” Gunaratne said.
In another press conference held on Monday, the NSW minister for mental health, Rose Jackson, said the government had submitted a request to the Industrial Relations Commission to urgently arbitrate the situation “as soon as this afternoon or this evening, depending on availability, but certainly tomorrow”.
“That’s quite a big step from the government to say we acknowledge that this particular group has got such a compelling case that needs to be resolved, that we will pull it out and seek an urgent resolution of these matters,” Jackson said.
“The situation that we’re facing here is quite unprecedented, and we continue to be very committed to ongoing dialogue on a path to resolution,” she said.
In the meantime, the NSW Health secretary, Susan Pearce, said the department had put a pause on processing resignations, unless psychiatrists had confirmed they wished to proceed.
The department wrote to psychiatrists last week asking them to confirm that they wished to proceed with their resignations, as she said “the last thing we would want is some administrative nightmare of processing a resignation only to then have the issue resolved”.
Although Jackson last week indicated 205 had tendered their resignations, Pearce said the numbers were “not settled yet – we are really talking about a day-by-day proposition”, with some psychiatrists having postponed their resignations by weeks and months.
“The resignations are staggered over a number of weeks, and indeed, some months in some cases. It’s not all about the 22nd of January, although we appreciate that is a significant date,” Pearce said.
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Jackson reiterated the government’s proposition to psychiatrists was a 10.5% wage increase over three years as well as a 10% onerous duties allowance, in addition to the 4.5% increase for all government employees introduced last year.
Although the doctors union rejected a 10.5% offer on behalf of all specialist doctors in April, Jackson said the government had acknowledged they were willing to “carve out psychiatrists as a specialist group” and allow them to accept the offer independently of wider negotiations.
The “suite of offers” also include a dedicated working group for improving conditions of employment such as access to education, leave, and on-call rostering, as well as a productivity pilot project to relieve psychiatrists of clerical and administrative work, Jackson said. However, one psychiatrist told Guardian Australia it was the efficiency trial with no guarantee of raised pay which was “the straw that broke the camel’s back”.
Most of the staff specialists who have indicated that they intend to resign are in metropolitan Sydney, Hunter New England and Illawarra regions, while the impact on regional NSW was “likely to be a little bit less” because they already have relatively high numbers of visiting medical officers and locums providing psychiatric services, Jackson said.
“Although it will be really challenging to have psychiatrists leave – and we don’t want them to leave – we are leaving no stoned unturned in making sure that quality mental health services continue to remain available, and I give the community an assurance that anyone who needs help will be able to access it,” Jackson said.
Pearce said the government was engaging locums, working with ambulance, police and partners in the university and private sectors, as Guardian Australia last week revealed the government was considering moving public psychiatry patients into private hospitals.
Pearce said the mental health emergency operations centre commenced operating last Monday from 8.30am until 10pm every day.
