Top Australian doctor reveals the extent hospital staff are under pressure

A top Aussie doctor has laid bare the wild scenes that are caused by the huge pressure building throughout the health system.

Bullying, aggression and disrespect are rampant in Australian hospitals with unhappy and under pressure staff turning on each other, a senior doctor claims.

Dr Simon Craig said the toxic culture is putting patient safety at risk and could also jeopardise medicine as a career, as doctors and nurses quit “due to burnout”.

“The cracks are widening and cannot be papered over anymore, with long waits to see GPs in the community, and hospitals struggling at multiple levels. Doctors and nurses are leaving the system in record numbers due to burnout,” Dr Craig said.

The crisis is so severe the hospital system would need to operate at 132 per cent of capacity to meet demand, with almost 700,000 Australians waiting for surgeries, including hip and knee replacements.

Dr Simon Craig has a stark warning for Australians about the state of their health system. Supplied

Public hospital performances have dropped to alarming levels not seen in a decade.

The Australian Medical Association (AMA) has repeatedly called for a return to hospital incentive funding that financially rewarded states that met benchmarks for treating emergency department patients within four hours and who treated elective surgery patients within clinically recommended times.

Ambulance ramping is also out of control with every state failing to meet ambulance performance targets, with long waits – some for as much as four hours – at overstretched hospital emergency departments.

Dr Craig said there had been examples of hospital staff “beating the crap out of each other” in the car park and surgeons taking legal action against each other.

“I remember hearing this and thinking, ‘What is going on here?’ How can things get to this?

Dr Craig, who is chief executive of PosMed, a private company promoting coaching an organisational culture change, said health workers often had to attend leadership courses aimed at boosting morale but the interventions had almost no effect.

Hospitals are under huge pressure and staff are struggling, Dr Craig said.

Some of the communication between staff could be “troubling” but that was a systemic weakness and not the fault of individuals, he said.

Dr Craig has specialised in obstetrics and gynaecology and spent 33 years in public and private health, but claims to have never seen things this bad.

“We can look at this pandemic and all of the struggles and all the ambulances lined up outside into ways we can say, ‘oh my god, it’s terrible’. Or we can say ‘this is terrible and now’s the time we can we can look at it – there’s no doubt that this is now the time we have to reimagine and we can look at it as an opportunity,” he said.

Without change he feared the health system would break down

Dr Simon Craig has written a new book, From Hurting To Healing: Delivering Love To Medicine And Healthcare, where he lays bare the problems confronting staff and what the solutions could be.

Originally published as Top Australian doctor reveals the extent hospital staff are under pressure