QLD hospital doctors subjected to bullying, overwork, stress

DISTURBING statistics have revealed the extent of bullying, stress and fatigue inflicted on doctors in Queensland’s hospital system.

Half of doctors at Royal Brisbane and Women’s Hospital are afraid they’ll make an error due to fatigue.

CLOSE to half of Queensland’s junior doctors have witnessed one of their colleagues being bullied or harassed, while 38 per cent have been on the receiving end, a new AMA report shows.

Released yesterday, AMA Queensland’s Resident Hospital Health Check revealed the problem of bullying and harassment in Queensland hospitals was getting worse.

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AMA Queensland Council of Doctors in Training executive Bav Manoharan said the data collected from around 650 doctors showed concerning trends.

“These numbers have across the state been relatively consistent with what we found last year — some places have done worse, some have done better — but realistically when you have over 40 per cent of your junior doctor population facing bullying and harassment in a state wide trend it’s very concerning,” he said.

“When you look at one of our larger hospital like the (Princess Alexandra) … only 44 per cent felt there was something they could do about the bullying, and at the Royal Brisbane and Women’s Hospital it’s about 37 per cent.

“They just don’t feel empowered to do anything about it.”

The hospital who recorded the most bullying and harassment was the Redlands hospital at a staggering 59 per cent, followed closely by the Gold Coast University Hospital on 55 per cent.

Dr Manoharan said another major concern form the report was the number of doctors working long hours.

“A large amount of doctors are working long hours right across the state,” he said.

“At the RBWH 51 per cent were concerned they would make a clinical error because of work-related fatigue — that’s about one in two doctors, and that’s concerning.”

More than one-third of doctors at the Queensland Children’s Hospital were working over 90 hours in a fortnight, and 56 per cent reported not claiming overtime.

“We’re expecting so much from our doctors but we don’t even return the favour that we are paying them for the hours they’ve worked,” Dr Manoharan said.

“There is a cultural of not claiming overtime because they fear it may make them look worse than their peers, and may harm their future career prospects.”

The aim of the report was to work with hospitals to find solutions and improve the working conditions for junior doctors, not to point fingers at the hospitals, Dr Manoharan said.