Hospital doctors’ resignation campaign

Czech hospital doctors are collectively handing in resignation notices as part of a campaign, ‘Thank you, we’re leaving’, announced in March 2010 by the doctors’ trade union (LOK-SČL) in protest at the poor state of the health care sector. Some trade unions in the sector have expressed support for the campaign but not others. The Minister of Health does not underestimate the gravity of the situation but is confident not all the doctors will actually leave to go abroad.

The protest campaign, ‘Thank you, we’re leaving’ (Děkujeme, odcházíme), is a follow-up to the conclusions of the assembly meeting of the Trade Union of Doctors in the Czech Republic (LOK-SČL) held on 25 March 2010. The meeting considered the condition of the Czech health care sector to be the worst since 1989 and, in protest, hospital doctors were asked to be ready to terminate their employment by 31 December 2010 and seek employment abroad unless the government adopted measures to improve the system.

13 reasons for leaving

LOK-SČL listed 13 reasons why its members had decided to hand in their notice and leave to work abroad. The main reasons were:

• insufficient funding of the Czech health care system;

• low salaries which do not correspond with high demands of the profession;

• a crumbling educational system;

• failure to comply with the Labour Code;

• overloading of doctors.

Doctors working in hospitals have demanded that their wages be increased to 1.5–3 times the present amount.

Support for the campaign

Support for the campaign has been expressed by:

• Czech Medical Chamber (ČLK);

• Czech Surgical Society (ČCHS);

• Association of Czech and Moravian Hospitals (AČMN);

• Czech Medical Association of Jan Evangelista Purkyně (ČLS JEP);

• Union of Czech Private Ophthalmologists (SPOL).

Not all medical associations support campaign

Nevertheless, not all organisations support the hospital doctors’ campaign. Disagreement has been expressed by:

• Czech Dental Chamber (ČSK);

• Association of Czech General Practitioners for Children and Youth (SPLDD);

• Association of Czech Private Gynaecologists (SSG ČR);

• Association of Czech General Practitioners (SPL ČR).

Although their collective declaration stated that they regard the situation in the health care sector as serious, they do not consider collective resignations and leaving to work abroad to be the solution and appealed to LOK-SČL members to reconsider their campaign.

Given the critical situation in the sector, members of these organisations are ready to provide patients with medical care within their specialisations (as much as is possible) if the hospital doctors do leave.

Government response

Up to 20 December 2010, some 3,513 doctors from 78 hospitals had handed in their notice. Despite this, Minister of Health Leoš Heger (a member of the conservative political party, Tradition Responsibility Prosperity 09, TOP 09) is upbeat. ‘Doctors will not simply leave, and if so, they will come back’, he said. He considers their threat of leaving tasteless, saying: ‘It escalates beyond good taste and verges on blackmail.’

Although Minister Heger does not believe that all the doctors who have threatened to leave would carry out their threat, he has stressed that he does not underestimate the situation. ‘If all the four thousand doctors really did leave, hospitals would function as in the low season’, he said, outlining the extent of the potential threat to the health care facilities.

A similar opinion has been expressed by economic experts. Miroslav Zámečník, an adviser to the Czech government, says: ‘Czechs will not migrate, and if some leave, it will not be more than a few hundred people’.

Soňa Veverková, Research Institute for Labour and Social Affairs (RILSA)