Oz offering NZ doctors $6000 a weekend

Photo / Paul Estcourt

Young New Zealand doctors are flitting away to Australia for short-term stints, earning as much as $6000 in a weekend.

Many of these "weekend warriors" fit in two-day shifts across the Tasman on top of their weekly work in New Zealand, lured by pay packets three times the size of a senior doctor.

The Resident Doctors' Association said the exodus of locums to Australia, even temporarily, was a direct result of poor treatment at the hands of district health boards, and the lowering of pay for locums as a cost-cutting measure.

Medical recruiter Sam Hazledine, who is based in Queenstown, said he placed 300 New Zealand locums a year in Australia, usually in hard-to-staff provincial areas.

"There is a great willingness [in Australia] to pay high rates for urgent jobs, or short-term positions.

"Young doctors want travel, autonomy and different experiences, and they get them there. Our system isn't flexible enough to accommodate that."

He said there was a trend towards young doctors staying for longer periods, with an average stay of three months.

One of them is Jason Pascoe, who left Southland Hospital in Invercargill for a three-month locum position in Port Macquarie, New South Wales. He said many young doctors were motivated by the higher wages and the change in lifestyle.

"With urgent jobs the pay is certainly higher. These shifts are available in New Zealand, too. But if you're earning Australian dollars it ends up being more."

Dr Pascoe, who grew up in Auckland, felt New Zealand district health boards needed to be more accommodating to Generation Y medical graduates who did not want to become cemented in a career too early.

Resident Doctors' Association general secretary Deborah Powell said retention of doctors would be greater if transfers between DHBs was seamless.

"There needs to be no downside in moving around. At the moment the divide between management and doctors is huge, and the [doctors] don't feel respected."

Last year Health Minister Tony Ryall launched a voluntary bonding scheme which offered young doctors $10,000 a year to stay in New Zealand and work in hard-to-staff areas.

By June this year, 1400 health professionals had signed up. The scheme will soon be extended to senior doctors.

Mr Ryall told the Herald that salaries were not the only driver of doctors' behaviour.

"If that was the case there wouldn't be any in New Zealand."

Schemes which addressed better training for young doctors and better career advice were now in place.

Professor Des Gorman, who chaired Health Workforce NZ, said solving the medical brain drain required more than "just throwing money at doctors".

"It's much more complex than that. They need to know they're valued ... and they need to get good training.

"Doctors going overseas is a good thing. But we need to show them we will look after them while they're there, and we'll guarantee them a job when they come back."

In the meantime, Dr Powell said, hospitals in New Zealand would remain understaffed.

"When you have to do a 16-hour shift in a regional hospital with only four doctors on, the job satisfaction is pretty low. So off they go to Australia, where pay is good and it's not far to fly back to Mum and Dad."

THE NUMBERS
* 25% of junior doctors leave NZ within five years of qualifying
* 40% of doctors working in NZ are from overseas
* $3000 is the amount per day that junior doctors can earn working in Australia