Category: Association of Salaried Medical Specialists

Source: Association of Salaried Medical Specialists – Press Release/Statement:

Headline: Auckland public health takes on junk food ads

Auckland public health officials are on the attack over advertising junk food to children. The Regional Public Health Service has just laid a complaint with the Advertising Standards Authority about an ad for Kinder Surprise chocolate, saying it specifically targets youngsters. But even if it’s upheld, health officials say there won’t be any real consequences.

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Source: Association of Salaried Medical Specialists – Press Release/Statement:

Headline: Otago medical students in limbo after exam cheating claims

Third-year medical students at the University of Otago don’t yet know if they’ll have to re-sit their exams after allegations of cheating. In an end-of-year practical exam, students were asked to demonstrate a clinical skill, such as examining a patient. Students were examined in batches and the Otago Medical School says students in the first session told the others what was in store. The university is now investigating which students cheated and what the consequences will be. Caitlin Barlow-Groome is the president of the Otago University Students Association. She talks to Susie Ferguson.

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Source: Association of Salaried Medical Specialists – Press Release/Statement:

Headline: Auckland children wait months for dental treatment

Auckland children with severe and often extremely painful teeth problems are having to wait more than eight months for treatment – double what they should be. Under Ministry of Health standards, all patients requiring specialist appointments should be seen within four months. But Auckland’s regional dental health service can’t meet the timeframe.

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Source: Association of Salaried Medical Specialists – Press Release/Statement:

Headline: Why Doctors Hate Their Computers

On a sunny afternoon in May, 2015, I joined a dozen other surgeons at a downtown Boston office building to begin sixteen hours of mandatory computer training. We sat in three rows, each of us parked behind a desktop computer. In one month, our daily routines would come to depend upon mastery of Epic, the new medical software system on the screens in front of us. The upgrade from our home-built software would cost the hospital system where we worked, Partners HealthCare, a staggering $1.6 billion, but it aimed to keep us technologically up to date.

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Source: Association of Salaried Medical Specialists – Press Release/Statement:

Headline: DHBs support fatigued surgeons continuing to work

The new collective agreement on offer to a small group of surgical registrars represented by Specialty Trainees of New Zealand(STONZ) makes clear the country’s twenty District Health Boards (DHBs) have a total disregard for the health and wellbeing of their doctors, and through them the safety of their patients.  Under the misguided assumption that an unfounded risk to training trumps the health and safety of doctors, the DHBs are endorsing a collective agreement that will see fatigued surgeons continuing to operate on patients.

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Source: Association of Salaried Medical Specialists – Press Release/Statement:

Headline: What’s changed in NZ’s health system a year after govt formed

Half a million people will soon pay less to see a doctor, under a change implemented by the coalition government. Radio New Zealand Health Correspondent Karen Brown looks at what’s been achieved in the health system since the government formed.

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Source: Association of Salaried Medical Specialists – Press Release/Statement:

Headline: Why modern medicine is a major threat to public health

When former airline pilot Tony Royle came to see me last year to seek reassurance that it was OK to participate in an Ironman event, having stopped all his medications 18 months after suffering a heart attack, I was initially a little alarmed.

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Source: Association of Salaried Medical Specialists – Press Release/Statement:

Headline: Nauru ousting Doctors Without Borders ‘unthinkable’ – Ghahraman

The government of Nauru has ordered that Médecins Sans Frontières – or Doctors Without Borders – stop working in the country, effective immediately. The charity has been providing medical services to residents, asylum seekers and refugees on the island since late 2017. Green Party MP Golriz Ghahraman has labelled the move unthinkable. She talks to Susie Ferguson.

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Source: Association of Salaried Medical Specialists – Press Release/Statement:

Headline: It’s hard for doctors to unlearn things. That’s costly for all of us.

We know it can be hard to persuade physicians to do some things that have proven benefits, such as monitor blood pressure or keep patients on anticoagulants. But it might be even harder to get them to stop doing things.

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Source: Association of Salaried Medical Specialists – Press Release/Statement:

Headline: A public business, not a public service

OPINION: Yet again, the neoliberal wrecking ball is swinging through New Zealand’s public service, fronted, alas, by Chris Hipkins whose laudable attempt (launched last February) to clean up the mess created by the State Sector Act 1988 has been captured by the high-paid top brass of the 1988-model state sector.

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