New care model uses a ‘virtual nurse’ to interact with the patient in ways appropriate to the level of care
Clinical laboratories and pathology groups aren’t the only healthcare organizations currently experiencing critical industrywide shortages. A chronic nursing shortage is prompting hospitals like Covenant Medical Center in Lubbock, Texas, to invent unique ways to circumvent this issue while still managing to provide exemplary patient care.
Covenant, an affiliate of Providence—a 51 hospital/1,000 clinic healthcare network spanning Alaska, California, Montana, New Mexico, Oregon, Texas and Washington—piloted a hybrid nursing model called “Co-Caring.”
The model “uses virtual nursing to care for patients and support the bedside team through two-way audio and video telehealth technology,” according to a Providence news release. This allows nurses to focus on more vital roles, such as administering medication and assessing patients’ conditions, while day-to-day tasks are performed by assistants and virtual nurses.
After operating successfully for one year at a 30-bed unit within the 381-bed Covenant, the Co-Caring model was expanded to 10 other units in hospitals operated by Providence where it reduced the workload for bedside nurses, increased caregiver collaboration, and resulting in financial benefits for the facility.
“This pilot is not about one unit in one hospital,” Julie Wright, RN (above), who at the time was a Nurse Manager at Covenant, in a Providence news release. “It is about taking the first steps to changing how we care for our patients. We are working on creating an environment where burnout is the exception and not the rule, and where joy is the expectation.” Clinical laboratories might use a similar approach to enable pathologists and clinical laboratory scientists to dedicate their time to higher-value tasks. (Photo copyright: LinkedIn.)
Elevating the Practice of Nurses
“The past three years dramatically transformed our industry and workforce in ways that accelerated the modernization of care,” said Providence SVP and System Chief Nursing Officer Sylvain Trepanier, RN, in the news release. “Co-Caring represents an innovative solution to one of healthcare’s most pressing issues—the increased need for nurses, which for the United States is currently estimated at more than 200,000 new nurses required each year to account for population growth.”
“By creating a new team that would share responsibility and accountability with a nurse that would be working virtually, we have people showing up every day doing the work that they love to do and removing some of the barriers that they had in doing it the old traditional way,” Trepanier told the Catholic Health Association of the United States (CHAUSA).
“Quite frankly, when we embraced this, even if we could cover our costs and it would be cost neutral, it would be a great proposition,” he continued. “The pleasant surprise of this is that we’re elevating the practice of nurses, the technicians feel a part of the team, and the patients are having a good experience. We’re having great operational outcomes and decreasing the total cost of care.”
Virtual Nurses
Virtual nurses are utilized through a bi-directional audio/video telehealth platform to support the bedside team in caring for patients. These virtual nurses assist with tasks like admission processes, discharge preparation, pre-procedural checklists, and medication reconciliation. Interdisciplinary Team Meetings, which include the virtual nurses alongside charge nurses, physicians, and case managers, are held daily to ensure the best patient care.
The Co-Caring model increased patient and caregiver satisfaction while simultaneously having positive financial significance. The first-year turnover rate (FYTO) among registered nurses decreased by 73% and by 55% for all staff involved in the program. Covenant was also able to decrease the amount of travel nurses it needed, which enabled it to hire more nurses, CNAs, and PCTs.
“On a 30-bed unit, we ended up having a return on our investment of roughly $450,000,” Trepanier told CHAUSA. “Our patients are happier, our nurses are happier, and we’re decreasing our total cost of care, which is what everyone should be after.
“If we don’t do this, we are going to run out of time in healthcare,” he continued. “I recognize that not everyone has the resources and not everyone has the capability of pulling something off like that. I also am very cognizant that the status quo is not an option. For the sake of our patients and for the sake of the health of the communities that we serve, we all need to lean in and figure out how to approach the work differently.”
Lessons for Clinical Laboratories
This innovative approach identifies which tasks need to be performed by skilled individuals and which can be done by lesser qualified personnel. Tasks are then assigned accordingly. Clinical laboratories may be able to take advantage of similar types of opportunities.
By reorganizing workflows, pathologists and clinical laboratory scientists could devote their time to higher value tasks, while the lesser tasks could be performed by pathology assistants. At a time when the number of laboratory professionals appears to be decreasing, it is imperative that lab managers develop ways to operate labs more efficiently.
Managers of pathology groups and clinical laboratories can learn from the challenges confronting the radiology profession
Members of the Intersociety Committee of the American Society of Radiology (ACR) recently met in Coronado, Calif., to discuss the “most pressing” challenges to their profession and investigate possible solutions, according to Radiology Business. Many of these challenges mimic similar challenges faced by anatomic pathology professionals.
The radiology leaders identified seven of the “most important challenges facing radiology today.” They include: declining reimbursement, corporatization and consolidation, inadequate labor force, imaging appropriateness, burnout, turf wars with nonphysicians, and workflow efficiency, according to a report on the meeting published in the Journal of the American College of Radiology (JACR).
“Solving these issues will not be easy,” said Bettina Siewert, MD, diagnostic radiologist at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (BIDMC) in Boston, Mass., professor of radiology at Harvard, and lead author of the JACR report, in the JACR. “This is a collection of ‘wicked’ problems defined as having (1) no stoppable rule, (2) no enumerable set of solutions or well-described set of permissible operations, and (3) stakeholders with very different worldviews and frameworks for understanding the problem,” she added.
“The Intersociety Committee is a freestanding committee of the ACR established to promote collegiality and improve communication among national radiology organizations,” JACR noted.
“Taken together, a ‘perfect storm’ of pressures on radiologists and their institutions is brewing,” said Bettina Siewert, MD (above), diagnostic radiologist at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston, Mass., professor of radiology at Harvard, and lead author of the JACR report. Wise pathology and clinical laboratory leaders will see the similarities between their industry’s challenges and those facing radiology. (Photo copyright: Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center.)
How Radiology Challenges Correlate to Pathology Practices
Here are the seven biggest challenges facing radiology practices today as identified by the Intersociety Committee of the ACR.
Declining Reimbursement: According to the ACR report, radiologists in 2021 performed 13% more relative value units (RVUs) per Medicare beneficiary compared to 2005. However, the inflation-adjusted conversion factor fell by almost 34%––this led to a 25% decline in reimbursements.
This issue has plagued the pathology industry as well. According to an article published in the American Journal of Clinical Pathology (AJCP), prior to adjusting for inflation, the average physician reimbursement increased by 9.7% from 2004 to 2024 for all included anatomic pathology CPT codes. After adjusting for inflation, the average physician reimbursement decreased by 34.2% for included CPT codes. The greatest decrease in reimbursement observed from 2004 to 2024 was for outside slide consultation at 60.5% ($330.12 to $130.49), followed by pathology consultation during surgery at 59.0% ($83.54 to $34.29). The average CAGR was -2.19%,” the authors wrote.
“Our study demonstrates that Medicare physician reimbursement for common anatomic pathology procedures is declining annually at an unsustainable rate,” the AJCP authors added.
The radiologists who identified this trend in their own field suggest that medical societies could lead the push to minimize the reimbursement cuts. Pathologists could also adopt this ‘strength in numbers’ mentality to advocate for one another.
Corporatization Consolidation: The authors of the ACR report identified this issue as limiting job opportunities for radiologists particularly in private practice. Pathology professionals have seen the same trend in their field as well. Increasingly, small pathology groups have been consolidated into larger regional groups. Some of those larger regional pathology groups will then be acquired by public laboratory corporations.
The authors of the ACR report suggest radiologists should be educated on the pros and cons of consolidation. They also suggest pursuing unionization.
Inadequate Labor Force: In both radiology and pathology there is a supply-and-demand issue when it comes to labor. Staffing shortages have been felt across all of healthcare, but particularly among pathology groups and clinical laboratories. Siewert and her co-authors suggest a three-pronged approach to address this issue:
Creating residency positions in private practice.
Recruiting international medical graduates.
Increasing job flexibility.
Pathology professionals could apply these same ideas to help close the gap between the open positions in the field and the number of professionals to fill them.
Imaging Appropriateness: A gap between service capacity and service demand for radiology imaging has created a frustrating mismatch between radiologists and clinicians. Radiology experts point to overutilization of the service causing the supply-and-demand crisis. Comparatively, pathologists see a similar issue in complex cases requiring more pathologist time to come to an appropriate diagnosis and identify a care plan.
“To facilitate this reduction, better data on imaging outcomes for specific clinical questions are urgently needed,” the authors of the ACR report wrote as a possible solution. “Considering the magnitude of the mismatch crisis, radiologists may also need to consider expanding their consultative role to include that of a gatekeeper, as is done in other more resource-controlled countries.”
Burnout: Perhaps one of the most talked about subjects in the medical field has been burnout. The issue has been thrust to the forefront with the COVID-19 pandemic; however, the burnout crisis began before the pandemic. About 78% of radiologists surveyed for this report claimed to be exceeding their personal work capacity.
The authors of the ACR report suggest a structured approach to air grievances without descending into despair. “Using a team approach based on the concept of listen-sort-empower, burnout can be combatted by fostering free discussion between frontline workers and radiologists,” they said. “Facilitators unaffiliated with the radiology department can help to maintain focus on gratitude for positive attributes of the work and the institution as well as to keep the sessions on task and prevent them from devolving into complaint sessions with a subsequent loss of hope.”
A similar approach could be applied to pathology groups and clinical laboratory to combat worker burnout as well.
Turf Wars with Nonphysicians: Over the last five years the number of imaging exams being interpreted by nonphysician providers has increased by 30%, according to the ACR report. The writers emphasized the need for increased understanding and awareness about the importance of physician-led care. They suggest solidarity among hospital medical staff to provide a united front in addressing this issue in hospital bylaws.
In pathology, the counterpart is how large physician groups are bringing anatomic pathology in-house. This has been an ongoing trend for the past 20 years. It means that the pathologist is now an employee of the physician group (or a partner/shareholder in some cases).
Increase Workflow Efficiency: Image interpretation accounts for only 36% of the work radiologists perform, the ACR report noted. This issue has a direct counterpart in pathology where compliance requirements and various tasks take time away from pathologist diagnosis. These issues could be solved by working AI into tasks, delegating non-interpretive tasks to other workers, and improving the design of reading rooms. All of these possible solutions could also be applied to clinical pathologists.
These issues being faced by radiologists compare directly to similar issues in the clinical pathology world. Pathologists and pathology group managers would be wise to learn from the experience of their imaging colleagues and possibly adopt some of the ACR’s suggested solutions.
Encouraging the next generation of clinical laboratorians could contribute to solving current staffing shortages in the nation’s medical laboratories
This holiday season brings an exciting new gift that will catch the attention of Dark Daily’s readers. It’s a children’s book that introduces young readers to working in clinical laboratories!
“This is a steppingstone into the career of laboratory science, so we should share what we do with the world. Any lab scientist who has a child, niece, nephew, or grandchild in their life should give this gift. It could open an entirely new world of possibilities for them. It could make them excited for science,” said the book’s author Kelli Garcia, microbiology supervisor at Saint Francis Hospital and Medical Center, part of Trinity Health of New England, in an exclusive interview with Dark Daily.
“Most children have a small idea or image of what options are available in medicine or science—usually a doctor or nurse. They never see the people that work behind the scenes or different areas,” Garcia noted.
She penned her book with hopes of calling attention to medical fields beyond those most commonly seen by children, as she also had only learned about the field when she was graduating from college.
“I Want to be a Laboratory Scientist,” is now available at many major retailers, including Amazon and Barnes and Noble. (Graphic copyright: Kelli Garcia.)
Opening Children’s Eyes
Garcia’s journey took about four years from the moment she began writing to finally finding a publisher for her 36-page book that’s geared toward 6-8 year-olds. “I spent many hours writing and rewriting so it wouldn’t be too specific but also not too minimal that the point and purpose would be missed,” she said, adding that her daughter was her muse.
Garcia’s own children have excitedly brought the book to their schools and shared them with their local library. Such steps could help a field that is working hard to keep up with demand.
“There are so many ways to engage children in different areas of science as long as we make those areas known to them. They don’t all wants to be a doctor or nurse, but some still want to help in another way. This book will show them you can be in medicine helping people but behind the scenes—the unsung hero,” microbiologist and children’s book author Kelli Garcia (above) told Dark Daily. She added, “It will also make them aware that laboratory science is a rewarding career and show that it’s not just doctors and nurses who are involved in treating patients.” (Photo copyright: Kelli Garcia.)
Those low numbers are not going unnoticed. The Medical Laboratory Personnel Shortage Relief Act of 2024, introduced in September by State Representative Deborah Ross (NC-02), was created to help bring a much-needed boost to the field. The Act brought in grants for clinical laboratory staff training in accredited institutions and added “medical laboratory professionals to the National Health Service Corps,” the ASCLS noted.
The ASCLS continues to encourage those working in clinical laboratories to make their voices heard on Capitol Hill to further support the field.
Hope is growing that more students will choose clinical laboratory work for their futures. Medical and clinical laboratory technologist was listed in Careers Fittest rankings of the top 14 careers to consider in 2024/2025. Careers Fittest cited an 11% job growth expected in the area by 2031.
It is a worthy objective to educate younger children about the career path of a clinical laboratory scientist and opportunities to work in microbiology laboratories. Perhaps Garcia’s new children’s book will help with that trend, and just in time for the holidays!
Incorrect results spanned exams from 2022-2024 with those students affected by this situation stunned by ABPath’s admission
There are always young anatomic pathologists who experience the heartache of failing board exams. Failing, after all, is part of the education process. But how disheartening would it be to learn years later that you actually passed those exams? For about 70 pathology students that’s exactly what happened.
On October 3, the American Board of Pathology (ABPath) announced that “a small percentage” of students were told they had failed an exam when they had not, MedPage Today reported. The test dates ranged from 2022 to 2024 and affected 76 students out of 4,059.
In its official statement, ABPath wrote that it had “recently conducted a reassessment and rescoring of the Primary and Subspecialty certification examinations. In doing so, ABPath identified that a small percentage of candidates (less than 2%) actually met the passing score requirements that were previously scored as slightly below the passing score threshold.”
The organization added, “The impacted candidates have all been notified. Those candidates received a passing score for their respective certification examination and will receive a refund of their application fee, as well as any fees paid toward subsequent examinations. Impacted training programs will be receiving notifications soon.”
According to MedPage Today, which received a copy of the email from a pathology student, “ABPath’s email to affected test takers was brief, explaining that a reassessment of the anatomic pathology certification examination ‘disclosed that your score exceeded the cut-score threshold for a passing score, rather than being slightly below it.’”
Many pathology students were stunned by ABPath’s admission and went to message boards to vent their frustration.
“Failing a major board hits you hard especially after so many years of training and so much time spend on studying. This situation was a shock, a disappointment, and a betrayal,” one former student identified as Idfcwytas wrote on Reddit concerning ABPath’s revelation, MedPage Today reported.
In its coverage of the ABPath announcement, MedPage Today wrote, “Bryan Carmody, MD (above), of Eastern Virginia Medical School in Norfolk, who blogs frequently about medical education issues, said that a situation like this decreases trust in the boards themselves, and that being mistakenly failed has financial and career impacts. For instance, he said, ‘many hospitals require board certification to get hospital privileges or to work there … so if you were applying to an academic job or something, I think it’s going to hurt your application.’” Anatomic pathologists understand clearly how lack of board certification affects their career goals. (Photo copyright: Eastern Virginia Medical School.)
ABPath’s Response and the Impact on Students
An ABPath spokesperson told MedPage Today, “We understand how significant this is to our candidates and diplomats and are committed to working closely with those impacted. ABPath has also implemented improvements to our processes to prevent this issue in the future.”
No details were disclosed on what changes would be made going forward, MedPage Today noted. As a result of the mistake, ABPath refunded exam fees and offered affected testers updated certificates and letters showing the proper results.
Some declared that response does not go far enough. Many claimed ABPath’s efforts lack adequate financial compensation as well as genuine compassion.
Reddit user walleyealx wrote, “The mistake definitely cost me LOTS of time, mental anguish, and money. Please note, there was no apology at all in these emails, which makes me even more angry,” MedPage Today reported.
Several days after the initial email, ABPath offered an apology “for the frustration this has caused,” according to MedPage Today.
No Recourse for Failing Grades
ABPath’s website notes that failed exams cannot be appealed. This means that any students doubting their scores during those years would not have been able to challenge the results.
“Even if the board offers a refund for the exams, it hardly makes up for the time, money, and lost career opportunities these individuals have had to deal with,” noted the Lento Law Firm in a blog post following ABPath’s announcement.
The firm added, “This incident only affected about 2% of exam takers from 2022 to 2024, but it’s a significant issue for these people. Not getting board certification can mean no hospital privileges, which can prevent you from obtaining certain jobs. Failing to get a certain specialty certification can also mean a $30,000 difference in your paycheck. Pathologists have only five years and 10 tries to pass the exam, which costs between $2,100 and $2,600 each time. Re-taking the exam after getting a failing score, therefore, represents a significant financial investment—not to mention the time spent studying.”
Implications of failure can be profound, but mistakes happen. ABPath appears to be taking steps to prevent similar mistakes in the future. Hopefully, the organization will also find a way to make whole those affected by its error.
Underfunding of clinical laboratories has led to similar worker walkouts in multiple Australasian nations
Once again, cuts in government spending on pathology services has forced healthcare workers to walk off the job in Australia. This is in line with other pathology doctor and clinical laboratory workers strikes in New Zealand and other Australasian nations over the past few years.
Announcement of a planned closure of the pathology laboratory at 30-bed Cootamundra Hospital in Australia to make room for expanding the emergency department spurred the health worker walkouts.
“Health staff from Cootamundra Hospital, alongside pathology workers from Deniliquin, Tumut, Griffith, Wagga Wagga, and Young will rally in front of their respective facilities” to draw attention to the effect closing the lab would have on critical healthcare services across those areas, Region Riverina reported.
The strikes are drawing attention to unfair pay and poor working conditions that underfunding has brought to the state-run healthcare systems in those nations. They also highlight how clinical laboratories worldwide are similarly struggling with facility closings, unfair pay, and unachievable workloads.
“The proposed closure of Cootamundra’s pathology lab is a short-sighted decision that will have far-reaching consequences for patient care in the region,” NSW Health Services Union (HSU) Secretary Gerard Hayes (above) told Region Riverina. Similar arguments have been made for years concerning the underfunding, pay disparities, and poor working conditions in New Zealand’s government-run clinical laboratories and pathology practices that has led to worker strikes there as well. (Photo copyright: HSU.)
Australia Pathology Lab Closure Stokes Fears
Cootamundra Hospital’s strike was spurred by a planned closure of its pathology laboratory. In May, employees learned of the plans to close the lab as well as surgery and birthing centers to accommodate expansion of the emergency department, Region Riverina reported.
“Pathology workers are already in short supply and this move could see us lose highly skilled professionals from the NSW Health system altogether,” New South Wales (NSW) Health Services Union (HSU) Secretary Gerard Hayes told Region Riverina.
The cuts would not only be detrimental to the area, it would significantly affect patient care, he added.
“This lab is not just profitable; it’s a vital lifeline for Cootamundra Hospital’s [surgical] theater lists and maternity unit,” he said. “Without this lab, patients will face significantly longer wait times for life-saving diagnostic information. This delay could severely impact our ability to provide timely care, especially in emergencies.”
Echoing those sentiments, HSU Union Official Sam Oram told Region Riverina that closing the Cootamundra Hospital lab would put pressure on labs in Wagga and Young and would continue a trend of closing smaller pathology labs. Oram, who organizes for members in Canberra and Murrumbidgee Local Health District, noted that smaller labs in Tumut and Deniliquin could be in danger as well.
“Why should people living in rural and regional areas have fewer and inferior services to Australians living in metropolitan areas?” Michael McCormack, MP, Federal Member for Riverina and former deputy prime minister of Australia, asked Parliament in June, Region Riverinareported. “There’s no right or proper answer to that question. They simply should not,” he added.
Tasmania’s Troubles
Medical scientists recently walked off the job at Launceston General Hospital in Tasmania, Australia, to protest “the government’s ‘inaction’ on recruiting more staff,” according to Pulse Tasmania. The hospital’s lab has a staff shortage of 17 employees, requiring the remaining staff members to handle a much increased workload, Ryan Taylor, a medical laboratory scientist with the Tasmanian Department of Health, told Pulse Tasmania.
“This shortfall is leading to significant and unacceptable challenges … which are causing the Tasmanian community from receiving vital test results that are essential for their health,” Lucas Digney, Industrial Champion, Health and Community Services Union (HACSU) leader, told Pulse Tasmania.
New Zealand Struggles with Its Healthcare Workers
Aotearoa, as New Zealand is known by its indigenous Polynesian population, also struggles with health worker walkouts.
“Medical labs are an essential organ of the health system. Many were stupidly privatized years ago, others still operate within Te Whatu Ora [aka Health New Zealand, the publicly funded healthcare system] with all the resource shortages and stress that go with that,” Newsroom said of the country’s plight in 2023. “There was a view that competition in medical labs would produce greater efficiency, but it has actually produced a mess.”
Dark Daily has covered the ongoing strife in New Zealand’s clinical laboratories over many years. Previous ebriefs highlighted how the strikes were causing delays in critical clinical laboratory blood testing and surgical procedures.
Underfunding in clinical laboratories continues to cause work stoppages in the Australasian countries. But as Dark Daily readers know, it is a growing problem among European nations and in the United States as well.
As before, the ongoing strikes continue to cause delays in critical clinical laboratory blood testing and surgical procedures
After seven months of failed negotiations, New Zealand’s blood workers, clinical laboratory technicians, and medical scientists, are once again back on strike. According to Star News, hundreds of lab workers walked off the job on May 31, 2024, with another longer walkout planned for June to protest pay disparities.
New Zealand Blood Service (NZBS) workers, who are represented by the Public Service Association or PSA (Māori: Te Pūkenga Here Tikanga Mahi), collect and process blood and tissue samples from donors to ensure they are safe for transfer.
“Our colleagues at Te Whatu Ora [Health New Zealand] are being paid up to 35% more than us and we want to be paid too. We want fair pay,” Esperanza Stuart, a New Zealand Blood Service scientist, told Star News.
“The stall in negotiations is largely attributed to a lack of movement from NZBS on the principal issue of parity with Te Whatu Ora laboratory workers rates of pay. There is currently a 21-28% pay differential between NZBS and Te Whatu Ora laboratory workers, despite both groups of workers performing essentially the same work,” NZ Doctor noted.
Health New Zealand is the country’s government-run healthcare system.
The first strike took place on May 31 from 1-5 pm. A second 24-hour strike is planned for June 4. The strikers outlined the rest of their strike schedule as follows:
The PSA union claims that the pay disparity workers are experiencing is pushing veteran workers out and complicating recruitment of new workers.
New Zealand Blood Service workers and junior doctors are once again back on the picket line to protest wage cuts and pay disparities. “I think it should be a signal that things are not right in our health system when there are multiple groups of workers going on strike simultaneously,” said PSA union organizer Alexandra Ward. Clinical laboratory workers in the US are closely monitoring the goings on in New Zealand as pressure over staff shortages and working conditions continue to mount in this country as well. (Photo copyright: RNZ.)
Clinical Laboratory Worker Strikes Ongoing in New Zealand
This is far from the first time New Zealand lab workers have hit the picket line.
In “Medical Laboratory Workers Again on Strike at Large Clinical Laboratory Company Locations around New Zealand,” Dark Daily reported on a medical laboratory workers strike that took place in 2023 in New Zealand’s South Island and Wellington regions. The workers walked off the job after a negotiated agreement was not reached between APEX, a “specialist union representing over 4,000 allied, scientific, and technical health professionals,” according to the union’s website, and Awanui Labs, one of the country’s largest hospital and clinical laboratory services providers.
This latest strike is likely to cause delays in vital surgeries and risk the nation’s critical blood supply. All of these strikes were spurred on by low pay, negative working conditions and worker burnout. Similar issues have caused labor actions in the United Kingdom’s National Health Service in recent years.
Junior Doctors Join Blood Service Workers on Picket Line
Blood service workers aren’t the only healthcare employees in New Zealand’s medical community taking action. In May about half of the nation’s junior doctors walked off the job for 25 hours to protest proposed pay cuts, NZ Herald reported.
In a letter to the nation’s public hospitals, Sarah Morley, PhD, NZBS’s Chief Medical Officer, “warned [that] even high priority planned surgeries should be deferred because they did not meet the definition of a ‘life-preserving service,’” and that “only surgeries where there is less than a 5% risk that patients may need a transfusion should be carried out,” RNZ reported.
According to an internal memo at Mercy Ascot, NZBS “did not consider cancers and cardiac operations in private hospitals to be a life-preserving service,” RNZ noted.
The situation may be more dangerous than officials are letting on, NZ Herald noted. A senior doctor at Waikato Hospital told reporters, “There are plenty of elective services cancelled today—clinics, surgery, day stay procedures etc. … And although I can only speak for my department, we are really tight for cover from SMO [senior medical officers] staff for acute services and pretty much all elective work has been cancelled. So, it’s actually pretty dire, and if next week’s planned strike goes ahead it’s going to be worse. I’d go as far as to say that it’s bordering on unsafe.”
The strike did take place, and the junior doctors went back on strike at the end of May as well, according to RNZ.
Support from Patients
Eden Hawkins, a junior doctor on strike at Wellington Hospital told RNZ that patient wellbeing is a top concern of striking workers and that patients have shown support for the doctors.
“When patients have brought it up with me on the wards or in other contexts there seems to be a bolstering sense of support around us, which is really reassuring and heartening because there’s obviously a conflict within ourselves when we strike, we don’t want to be doing that,” she said. Hawkins also makes the argument that striking workers can improve patient wellbeing in the long run. Improvement of pay and conditions could lessen staff turnover and overall improve the standard of care.
New Zealand healthcare workers haven’t been shy when it comes to fighting for the improved working conditions and fair pay. And their problems are far from unique. American healthcare workers have been struggling with worker burnout, pay disparities, high turnover as well. Clinical laboratory and other healthcare professionals in the US would be wise to keep an eye on their Kiwi counterparts.
