Psychologists vote for nationwide strike

Psychologists employed by District Health Boards have voted in favour of nationwide strike action after DHBs failed to present an offer in bargaining last week to address the psychologist workforce crisis.

From Wednesday 31 July psychologists employed by seventeen District Health Boards and members of APEX – the union for health professionals, will impose a nationwide ban on all overtime for five weeks until Tuesday 3 September. The action will be the first nationwide strike of psychologists in New Zealand.

“The Psychology Workforce Taskforce, set up by the Ministry of Health and Health Workforce New Zealand to address recruitment and retention issues facing the psychologist workforce estimated in 2018 that we need an additional 268 psychologists working in District Health Boards to meet demand for services. Yet in the same year rather than gaining, we lost 73 psychologists from DHB employment,” said Dr Deborah Powell, APEX National Secretary.

Since then we have had the report of the Government’s own Inquiry into Mental Health recommend that in order to expand access to talking therapies, “an immediate priority is to begin building [the psychology] workforce”. However, all signs confirm a growing workforce crisis.

• The international benchmark is that health services should have 20 full time psychologists per 100,000 people.
• New Zealand DHBs employ an average of 11.8 psychologists per 100,000 – ranging from 17 to 2.7 FTE per 100,000 people.
• The numbers of psychologists employed per 100,000 population dropped 4.1% between 2016 and 2018
• In some DHBs only 5-7% of clients referred to specialist mental health services access a psychologist and patients can end up waiting between 3 and 12 months for psychology input.

“DHBs are losing experienced psychologists in droves to better paid jobs in the Department of Corrections, ACC and private practice. Despite the stated aims of the Government to make talking therapies more available under the wellbeing budget, they have yet to invest in staffing, pay and conditions adequate that will retain psychologists,” concluded Dr Powell.