Category: Health

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

Headline: Nurses’ strike underway

Nurses around the country are on strike for 24 hours from 7am Thursday 12 July, after last-ditch talks failed to settle their pay deal. Nurses say it’s about safety and safe staffing in hospitals, and ensuring nurses are valued for the work they do.

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

Headline: Urgent call to improve medicine access for Māori

New research is painting a bleak picture of the problems Māori patients face in getting equitable access to medicines. Dr. Matire Harwood (Ngapuhi) is a senior lecturer at the University of Auckland’s Medical School and GP at Papakura Marae. Her research is focused on tackling some of the biggest inequalities in Māori health to improve outcomes for patients. She says the latest research shows a clear and urgent need to improve medicines management services, but there are positive signs at a grass roots level. She is a finalist for Te Tupu-ā-Rangi Award for Health and Science for her contributions to investigating health conditions in relation to Māori health.

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

Headline: JAMA Forum: The role of health information technology in administrative costs

HIT doesn’t actually seem to be providing substantial [administrative] savings. A 2014 review of early adoption of HIT among thousands of US hospitals showed no notable cost savings 5 years after implementation. One study of an EHR implementation pilot program in Massachusetts found the average projected 5-year return was negative, with a loss of almost $44 000 per physician.

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

Headline: No guarantee no-one will go blind as many await eye surgery

People living in South Auckland are losing their sight as doctors struggle to treat the soaring number of patients suffering from eye conditions. The Counties-Manukau District Health Board has been struggling for years to meet patient demand and the backlog remains stubbornly high.

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

Headline: ACC adds insult to injury in cavalier response to medical advisors

“ACC has added insult to injury by planning to cut medical advisory staffing and then responding in a very cavalier way to our members’ quite reasonable requests for improvements to their collective employment agreement,” says Lloyd Woods, Senior Industrial Officer at the Association of Salaried Medical Specialists (ASMS).

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

Headline: ticky Floors and Glass Ceilings

With the increased diversity of our surgical workforce, we must examine our current practices and ensure that we are allowing for unbiased equality in career advancement. Empirical data identifying the underlying forces driving inequities will be examined, as will successful practices that have mitigated these issues in other disciplines. An important opportunity exists in the increasing diversification of the surgical career path, which requires a personalization of surgical careers that has not been traditionally afforded. The central role of culture will be explored and concrete recommendations to advance these agendas over the next 10 years will be considered

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

Headline: Gordon Campbell on Jim Bolger’s workplace reform task force

The neo-liberal wing of the National Party has never really felt that Jim Bolger was one of them, and the feeling was entirely mutual. Back in October 1980 when the ideologues wanted Bolger to topple Robert Muldoon (in the so called ‘colonels coup’) he declined to be their agent, on the grounds that he thought the cure they were offering would be worse than the disease. Tactically, Bolger then outflanked the neo-liberals (ie Quigley, Upton, Richardson) by bringing in voluntary unionism in 1983.

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

Headline: The Medical Council’s latest workforce survey is now available online

The Medical Council’s latest workforce survey is now available online. The report presents the results of the Medical Council of New Zealand workforce surveys for 2016. It contains information about changes in the medical workforce including retention rates for doctors.

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