Public hospital doctors in the Australian state of Victoria plan to walk off the job for 24 hours as part of their escalating industrial action to improve working conditions.

Members of the Australian Medical Association (AMA) Victoria and the Australian Salaried Medical Officers’ Federation (ASMOF) Victoria have been engaged in protracted negotiations with the state government over issues such as long shifts, unpaid overtime (particularly for doctors responding to out-of-hours calls), and less parental leave than other public servants receive.

The industrial action began a month ago, when doctors started skipping after-hours administrative meetings, refusing to bill, and ignoring emails or phone calls from hospital management. More recently, doctors at some regional hospitals walked off the job for several hours.

These measures have failed to elicit any response from the government, Simon Judkins, MD, emergency physician and president of the AMA Victoria, told Medscape News Australia. “We’re 12 months into negotiations, we’re three health ministers down, we’re a couple of months out from a [state] election, and we still don’t have anything on the table.”

The 24-hour work stoppage is planned for Tuesday, September 15, at public hospitals across the state, which had a population of around 6.5 million in 2021. “It’s a big thing for doctors to walk off the job,” Judkins said. “We’re all a bit anxious about this step because we want to make sure that our patients are looked after.”

The hospitals will still have enough baseline staff to run the emergency and intensive care departments and perform emergency surgery, but they will not have enough staff for outpatient clinics. “We’ve said to the health services, treat this like a weekend,” Judkins said.

The Victorian Department of Health respects workers’ rights to take protected industrial action, a spokesperson told Medscape News Australia. “The Department of Health is working closely with the Victorian Hospitals’ Industrial Association and Victorian health services to minimize disruption to patient care throughout this period of industrial action.”

It’s the first time in 20 years that Victorian public hospital doctors have taken industrial action, and 97% of members of the AMA Victoria and ASMOF voted in favor of it.

At the core of the dispute are what doctors and doctors-in-training call long working hours and poor conditions in the public hospital system. At a recent meeting in the regional town of Bendigo, doctors spoke of emergency departments being understaffed because senior medical staff were burnt out, leaving junior doctors unsupervised. Judkins told of doctors being on call for an entire weekend, taking multiple phone calls during the night — for which they are not remunerated — then having to work on Monday morning.

“Having to ask that we can guarantee that they’re going to get 2 days off in a row in a fortnight just seems extraordinary; that they can actually get a meal break during a shift,” he said. “It’s really trying to give them fair work conditions that you would expect in any other industry.”

At recent stop-work meetings in the regional towns of Ballarat and Bendigo, the striking doctors found strong community support, said Judkins. “They know how hard all the docs are working to look after them, so hopefully that translates into a bit of pressure on the government to make some decisions.”

Judkins reported no relevant financial relationships.