Powell said there was a 50 per cent burnout rate among medical specialists and 25 per cent of specialists employed by New Zealand DHBs intended to leave in the next five years.

“When you’ve got high understaffing, you’ve got high workloads, why on earth would you be doing this,” he said. “This is one of the most stupid things I’ve ever seen.”

PSA national secretary Erin Polaczuk said nine years of underfunding in health has put DHBs like Counties Manukau in a “perilous state”.

“The DHB should be offering incentives for experienced clinicians to keep working for the DHB, not offering them costly exit payments,” she said.

“Our members are already struggling to deliver quality care when and where it’s needed. Workloads are incredibly high and there are current vacancies in many professions. Removing senior experienced staff from any role in the organisation will have serious consequences for the remaining staff and patient safety.

“Our members will be concerned that this is just the beginning and that forced redundancies of other staff will follow.”

Harry said the idea of the voluntary cessation scheme, and the way it had come about, was “unacceptable and inappropriate”. “It demonstrates that the DHB is under financial pressures due to underfunding. It is a desperate and peculiar way to attempt to make savings,” she said.

Polaczuk said losing senior staff when there were already unfilled vacancies would have a flow-on effect and put more pressure on other doctors and could create an environment where mistakes were made, and leave patients facing further delays.

She acknowledged that Counties Manukau DHB, like health boards around the country, was under increasing financial strain, but said this was not the way to manage it.

On Tuesday the association received a guarantee that the health board would not roll out the scheme and that a proper consultation process would begin with urgency, Polaczuk said.

Harry said NZNO remained concerned that offering redundancy to senior nurses and midwives and replacing them with less experienced ones was not in the best interests of the workforce or patients.