Wards in NSW’s largest psychiatric hospital close as mass resignations begin
Share:
Doctor calls situation ‘an absolute disaster’ for public mental health system and vulnerable patients. Mental health wards have begun to close in New South Wales as negotiations to avert the mass resignations of psychiatrists continue. At Cumberland psychiatric hospital, the largest mental health facility in NSW and the oldest in Australia, the acute and rehabilitation wards have closed, and the NSW branch of the Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Psychiatrists (RANZCP) predicts more will follow.
At a directions hearing of the NSW Industrial Relations Commission (IRC) on Tuesday morning, the doctors’ union agreed with the state government to seek expedited arbitration with a full bench of the commission to hear the dispute over five days from 17-21 March. A decision will be handed down soon after.
More than 200 psychiatrists working in the public system indicated they would resign after the government refused to agree to a 25% pay increase in a single year, which they say is needed to attract new doctors and retain those now working in the public system.
On Tuesday, the NSW minister for mental health, Rose Jackson, said of the 205 psychiatrists who had indicated they intended to resign, 25 had subsequently rescinded and 81 had deferred their resignations so that they were “not imminent this week”.
