TWO breast cancer surgeons working for Queensland Health have quit, blaming the proposed Newman Government contracts as “the final straw’’.

The surgeons have quit the Royal Brisbane and Women’s Hospital during the contracts dispute, saying the threat of hospital managers controlling their rosters, and the impact on their families, had been a precipitating factor.

They were both working part-time at the hospital and will now be based in the private sector.

Senior medical officers have threatened to resign from the public sector en masse unless the Queensland Government addresses their concerns over the controversial public hospital contracts.

Health Minister speaks to doctors over contracts dispute

Doctors meet to talk over contracts dispute

Talks will resume in Brisbane today between doctor representatives and Queensland Health bureaucrats to resolve the dispute, but they appear doomed to fail with the medical profession calling for law changes.

Letters sent to senior medical officers at the weekend advised that while Queensland Health director-general Ian Maynard had come to the table with “an enormous amount of good faith’’, the scope he had been given to solve the dispute “was not wide enough’’.

The doctors say Health Minister Lawrence Springborg needs to consent to changes to both the Industrial Relations Act and the Hospital and Health Boards Act, as well as agree to rewrite the contract framework, to solve the crisis.

Opposition Leader Annastacia Palaszczuk yesterday called on Premier Campbell Newman to intervene in the row to prevent “bedlam within our public hospital system’’.

A spokesman for Mr Springborg would not comment on the contracts impasse last night, saying both parties had agreed on a weekend media blackout.

Central to ending the deadlock is the removal of section 197 of the Industrial Relations Act which allows hospital managers to engage in conduct previously considered unlawful to compel medical specialists to sign a contract.

Doctors will meet at the Brisbane Convention and Exhibition Centre on Wednesday night to discuss the contract deadlock.

The meeting is expected to discuss a mass resignation strategy.