Over half of NSW's public hospital psychiatrists have resigned in protest over a pay offer described as 'bitterly demoralising'. The mass exodus is set to begin on January 21 if a new deal is not reached.
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’.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 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 inpatient care. She tried for months, exhausting her professional networks, but no mental health ward could take him
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