Limited services will be available at Wakari and Dunedin hospitals during the junior doctors' strike which begins tomorrow and, with Anzac Day this Friday, it could be next week before services are fully restored.
Elective surgery at Dunedin Hospital will still be reduced on Thursday to allow for any backlog of acute cases.
Otago District Health Board operations manager Megan Boivin said those affected by the changes to services during the strike should have been advised last week.
The number of patients affected had not been collated yet.
The strike is due to run from 7am tomorrow to 7am on Thursday. There will be no elective surgery during that period, but acute surgery will be available as required.
Striking junior doctors can be brought in if required for lifepreserving cover during the strike under an agreement reached with their union, the New Zealand Resident Doctors Association.
There will be restricted outpatient services across most areas, including general surgery, rheumatology, endocrinology, and orthopaedics.
Some radiology procedures and cardiology diagnostic procedures where patients would not be required to be admitted would also be carried out. All patients involved would have been contacted.
Surgery for the end of last week had been planned so patients could be discharged by today or tomorrow, but Mrs Boivin pointed out that nobody would be discharged unless deemed ready for it.
Discharging patients required quite a lot of input from junior doctors.
Doctors working at Wakari and Dunedin hospitals during the strike will include junior doctors (registrars and house surgeons who are not members of the union. (Services at other hospitals in Otago are not affec ted by the strike as their employees are not classified as resident doctors.)
Mrs Boivin said she could not give accurate numbers of non union members at this stage, but it was less than half of the total of 172 full-time equivalent doctors.
Doctors had to be members at the time the strike notice was issued and this took some checking.
People should use the services of their family doctor or the Dunedin Urgent Doctors and Accident Centre during the strike if they needed non-urgent treat ment and ensure that the emer gency department was kept free for urgent cases, she said.
If the strike were called off at the eleventh hour, there would be limits to what services could be offered tomorrow and Wednes day because of the diffi culty in notifying patients, Mrs Boivin said.
Pay talks between Dis trict Health Boards New Zealand and the New Zealand Resident Doctors Association broke down last Wednesday. after the boards rejected the association's reduced claim and the associa tion rejected their counter offer
There has also been some controversy over proposed pay for senior doctors' extra work load during the strike, and it is understood Otago and Southland doctors rates have still not been settled after discussions between the senior doctors union, the Association of Salaried Medical Specialists, and chief executive of both boards, Brian Rousseau.
It has been suggested, although not confirmed by Mr Rousseau that he would like senior doctors to accept a lower rate than the national recommendation (which ranged from $250 an hour to $500 an hour depending on the time worked).
