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Public health physicians from the Irish Medical Organization will vote in favor of the strike, including the strike, as they demand that they be granted hospital consultant status.
Because they are not classified as consultants, public health physicians earn up to 48% less than their fellow hospital consultants and have been campaigning to close that gap for some 20 years.
Voting will begin on November 16 and will take about 10 days.
IMO sources said doctors had not yet decided what form industrial action would take, but did not rule out industrial disruption before Christmas.
Under normal circumstances, public health physicians deal with the health problems of the population, including outbreaks of infectious diseases.
However, since the pandemic, many have engaged in “complex” contact tracing outside of homes, where settings such as nursing homes and schools are involved.
The 60 public health specialists can currently earn up to € 111,822, but their fellow hospital consultants with a public “type A” contract can take home between € 141,026 and € 195,653.
Consultants with other contracts that allow for an element of private practice could take home significantly more.
IMO also maintains that more public health specialists need to be recruited.
The union notes that while Ireland has 60, comparable countries like Scotland and New Zealand employ 179 and 169 respectively and are qualified as consultants.
Tonight, the Health Department said it hoped to engage constructively over the next month to prevent any industrial action.
In a statement, he acknowledged that consultant status for the public health specialty had been recommended under a new public health framework in the Crowe Horwath Report published in 2018.
The Department said it was also consistent with the intended role for public health specialists at Sláintecare and the Scally Report on the National Cervical Screening Screening Service.
He said that the Minister of Health, the Department and the HSE are committed to the early introduction of a new framework for public health care, as provided in the Government Program, and that this will involve the establishment of a health consultant public. model according to the Crowe Horwath Report.
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