My brother-in-law is a doctor working for NSW Health. Here are a few of his comments when he told us about the strike:

Pretty huge. Never fancied myself a unionist. Never thought I would go on strike.

I told my boss I will be participating. I will not be doing anything elective, which given my current role is 95% clinics and elective day admissions, means on 2 of the 3 days I won't go to work at all. I will continue to be on call for acute consults from the inpatient teams, so that acute care isn't compromised. But for the 15 odd families who's appointments will be cancelled it's going to be mighty inconvenient. I hate that.

But I can't see another way. NSW Health has given up even attempting to negotiate on our Award, their most recent proposal was a copy paste of our current award with a few areas in which they have enhanced their ability to sack people for a range of things (including if you get sick and are unable to do your job, without needing to have sick leave expire or anything), and zero concessions to any of the things we asked for.

But apparently we are greedy doctors who don't care about people, or we would just accept it.

But here's the thing. I did a double shift yesterday (8am to 10pm) because they can't manage to hire enough people to staff our roster. Why? Because no one in their right mind would choose to work in NSW if they had the choice to work for any other state health service. Comparison of the awards makes the decision a no brainer.