Doctors’ mass resignation deepens NSW government’s worker woes

NSW’s public hospital bosses have been flooded with 150 resignation letters after half the staff specialists workforce followed through with their desperate attempt to save the state’s failing mental health system.

The move is an astonishing escalation in an industrial dispute between public psychiatrists and the Minns government after negotiations collapsed this week.

Dr Pramudie Gunaratne, chair of the NSW branch of the Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Psychiatrists, said the state government’s pay offer was “bitterly demoralising”.Credit: Louise Kennerley

A total of 150 of the state’s 295 staff specialist psychiatrists had formally resigned by Thursday night.

The government took the Australian Salaried Medical Officers’ Federation (ASMOF), the union representing the specialists, to the Industrial Relations Commission on Thursday, accusing them of co-ordinating the mass resignations. The union denies encouraging or co-ordinating any resignations.

The resignations will trigger a mass exodus on January 21 if no pay deal is reached following the government’s latest offer, which included an assertion that any higher offer would need to come from “efficiency gains” piloted over six months.

Dr Pramudie Gunaratne, chair of the NSW branch of the Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Psychiatrists, said the offer was bitterly demoralising.

“This group of people is incredibly dedicated to working in the public sector, but when you are already stretched so thin [and] you have that sort of response from the government, it’s really hard to continue working … where our patients are having traumatic, awful experiences,” Gunaratne said.

Gunaratne described one of her patients with severe intellectual disability and psychosis in desperate need of in-patient care. She tried for months, exhausting her professional networks, but no mental health ward could take him.

The family was forced to relinquish their son at an emergency department, and he was admitted to a medical dementia ward, Gunaratne said.

“These are the lengths people need to go to. This is how critically underresourced the hospital system is,” she said.

Government data shows the cost of short-term locum contracts had increased threefold to roughly $60 million. Psychiatrists demand a 25 per cent pay increase effective immediately (costing roughly $24 million) or an alternative plan to have positions to be filled.

The dispute is the latest since the Minns government lifted the wages cap in September last year, including intense pay negotiations with nurses and midwives.

Staff specialist doctors had previously rejected the state government’s standard public sector wage offer of 10.5 per cent over three years (inclusive of 1 per cent superannuation, which is federally legislated).

Jackson said this would equate to a salary boost for psychiatrists between $27,550 and $37,220 and would lead to pay rises of up to $89,000 for some doctors.

Mental Health Minister Rose Jackson said the pilot was not about asking psychiatrists to do more.

“It’s about addressing the issues they’ve raised, such as cutting duplicative admin to help free them up to focus on patient care,” Jackson said.

She said the government was “implementing strategies to safeguard service continuity”.

ASMOF NSW president Dr Nicholas Spooner said the trial offer was “absurd” and insulting to psychiatrists, who are covering for hundreds of unfilled positions.

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