Victorian public hospital doctors will strike for the first time in 20 years, walking out of the Royal Melbourne, Royal Children's and Royal Women's on August 13
Ninety-seven per cent of members voted for the stoppage, which halts non-urgent services at Parkville and CBD hospitals for three and a half hours.
Doctors at the Royal Melbourne, the Royal Children's and the Royal Women's will stop work on August 13.
It is the first protected industrial action by Victorian public hospital doctors in 20 years.
The stoppage runs from 12.30pm until 4pm across hospitals in Parkville and the CBD, and members will rally in Grattan Street.
Doctors in emergency departments and other critical frontline services will keep working. Hospitals have been asked to reschedule non-life-threatening appointments for the day.
Ninety-seven per cent of members of the Australian Salaried Medical Officers Federation voted for it.
Australian Medical Association Victoria president Simon Judkins said the union had spent 12 months trying to negotiate.
“Up to 50 per cent of, particularly our doctors in training, report incredibly high levels of fatigue and stress, and they're incredibly worried in those conditions about whether they might be prone to making errors,” he said.
That is the claim underneath the pay dispute.
Not that doctors are underpaid in the abstract, but that tired doctors make mistakes and patients wear them.
“Many of our doctors still don't get paid for overtime, a lot of our consultants are on call after hours and don't get paid for overtime,” Mr Judkins said.
“We're also looking at shifts, shift fatigue, making sure doctors get adequate breaks when they're on work.”
The walkout is one part of it.
Statewide, doctors will also stop billing patients, refuse unscheduled overtime, and stop answering emails and phone calls from hospital management.
The billing ban is the one with teeth.
Public hospitals recover money from private health insurers and the Commonwealth on the back of that paperwork, and it does not get done by anyone else.
Health Minister Harriet Shing said Victorian doctors provided world-class treatment and care and that the government would continue to support them.
Shing has held the portfolio since April.
She announced last month that she is leaving parliament and will not contest the November election.
That is the shape of this dispute.
A ballot returned at 97 per cent, a union that has been at the table for a year, and a minister with four months left in the job being asked to sign a deal her successor will have to fund.
The last time Victorian public hospital doctors did this, the Bracks government was in its second term.
The state goes to the polls on November 28.