South West Sydney hospitals: young doctors committing suicide over workloads
A Sydney doctor has revealed junior clinicians in southwest Sydney hospitals are treating so many patients each day they are committing suicide at much higher rates. SEE THE LATEST HERE.
Liverpool
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Junior doctors are committing suicide at higher rates over massive workloads they endure at Southwest Sydney hospitals — as patients are being “screwed” by a lack of government funding, a NSW Parliamentary Inquiry has heard.
Liverpool Hospital Medical Staff Council chair, associate professor Miriam Levy, told the inquiry she feared young doctors in local hospitals across southwest Sydney were so overworked they were “committing suicide at much higher rates”.
“Junior doctors are “forced to treat 25 patients at a time, spread out over several wards because there aren’t enough beds”,” she said.
“In the last few years we have seen junior doctors committing suicide.
“And suicides of juniors in the South West Sydney Local Health District are considerably higher.”
The Inquiry into current and future provisions of health services in the south-west Sydney growth region had a large number of people give evidence, but none of them were from NSW Health.
However, Prof Levy said patients and doctors were “being screwed” by a lack of government funding, resulting in clinicians being forced to “ration services” including lifesaving Kidney Dialysis.
“Rationing Dialysis does happen in places like Pakistan, but it shouldn’t be happening here,” prof Levy said. “When it comes to inpatient services and acute care, Liverpool is grossly underfunded, and god help them at Fairfield.”
THE GREAT DIVIDE — SYDNEY’S HEALTH CRISIS
Part One: south west patients funded $800 less per person than Sydney residents
Part Two: south west patients forced to travel hours for treatment
Part Three: leaders are calling for a new hospital at Aerotropolis
Part Four: 24,000 new medical students needed to fight west’s growth
Part Five: Patients waiting 300 days for surgery in south west Sydney
Part Six: south west teens shock youth suicide numbers as specialist staff numbers revealed
Part Seven: Claims health department removed beds from state’s busiest EDs
Part Eight: Where mini-metro hospitals will be built across Sydney
Part Nine: Kids enduring 18-month wait times for paediatric services
Health Services Union NSW secretary, Gerard Hayes told NewsLocal he wasn’t surprised to hear of self harm in junior doctors working in the southwest Sydney Local Health District.
“We see young doctors who are doing very long shifts in very stressful times,” Mr Hayes said. “They are under enormous pressure and to be able to function at a high level as a junior medical officer is a pretty tough gig.”
Mr Hayes said some doctors consider breakdowns as a “right of passage to push yourself to those levels”.
“Hospitals need to look after the health of their own doctors to ensure the health of patients,” he said. “Is it right that someone should be looking after that amount of people and doing shifts of 14 to 15 hours?”
NSW Nurses and Midwives work health safety officer, Leslie Gibb, revealed when he was working in a South West Sydney Local Health District hospital’s Pathology team five years ago, two of his colleagues from the same department committed suicide within a matter of months of each other.
News of young doctor’s committing suicide comes as Macarthur Medical Staff Council chair, Dr Setthy Ung, said historic underfunding, lack of specialist services, and ballooning wait times has resulted in doctors being “dragged through the Coroners’ Court”.
“We are pushed to our limit and then we don’t have successful rescues,” Dr Ung told the hearing. “During my time at Macarthur I have seen doctors appear three times in the Coroners’ Court, and we have lost a doctor every time.”
Dr Ung pleaded with members of inquiry to call for increases in funding across the region to provide localised specialist services like nuclear medicine, tackling childhood obesity and pathology services.
“No patient should need to travel long distances to access services or procedure,” he said.
“Last week we had a seven-year-old presenting with acute appendicitis, however, we didn’t have the services to treat her.
“Putting her in an ambulance would have been writing her death certificate, so we pleaded with an ED doctor to perform the surgery and then the whole intensive care unit looked after this single patient following surgery.”
The first day of hearings comes after NewsLocal launched an extensive campaign — The Great Divide — to address a series of systematic shortfalls in resources across southwest Sydney.
Campbelltown Hospital emergency department clinical director, associate professor Richard Cracknell, said current funding by the NSW Government resulted in a $1 billion gap between the activity-based model currently used and “population-based needs”.
“We understand that hard work is an integral part of our job,” prof Cracknell told the hearing. “What we don’t understand is the inequity of resources provides to health services in southwest Sydney in comparison to health services across Greater Sydney.”
Prof Cracknell said his emergency department had the highest number of presentations of any department across the state, “yet the lowest number of specialists”.
He said recent statistics revealed 40 per cent of the inpatients presenting to Campbelltown and Camden hospitals had to be provided care outside of South West Sydney Local Health District.
NSW Nurses and Midwives’ Association general secretary Brett Holmes said there were 10.68 fulltime midwife roles currently vacant at Campbelltown hospital resulting in shortfalls in services.
“Midwives work out they are working in an unsafe environment and putting their roles and lives at risk,” he said.
“In southwest Sydney, there is a heavy reliance on assistants in midwifery and midwives are forced to work extremely hard to cover the shortfall to provide care and oversee the care of others.
“There needs to be some sort of incentive to match the growth in South West Sydney.”
Labor MLC and acting Health spokesman Walt Secord said he was shocked to learn that patients requiring Kidney Dialysis were forced to ration treatment due to a lack of resources, while Greens MLC Cate Faehrmann said it was frightening to hear that southwest Sydney residents were being treated “like second class citizens”.
”It is concerning that the Berejiklian Government has a focus on construction plans for the expansion of some hospitals, but fails to plan and fund the workforce to treat the region,” Mr Secord said.
A Health Ministry spokeswoman said the local health district was “actively participating in this inquiry and, once concluded, will respond to the findings and recommendations”.
“The 2019-20 budget alone for the District is almost $2 billion, an increase of nearly $94
million on the previous financial year’s budget,” she said.
“This is the largest budget of any metropolitan health district in NSW.
“With almost $3 billion committed to hospital redevelopments, South Western Sydney Local
Health District is extremely well positioned to meet the healthcare needs of the growing community.”
Expansion plans include the $740 million for the new Liverpool Health and Academic Precinct (LHAP) plus $50 million for a new carpark at the precinct; $1.3 billion for a new Bankstown Hospital; $632 million for the Campbelltown Hospital and $68.7 million for Stage 1 of the Bowral Hospital.
The spokeswoman said the district would benefit from the recruitment of a record 8300 frontline health staff over the next term of government, including 5000 additional
nurses and midwives.
Questions relating to young doctor deaths were not responded to.
— Lifeline 13 11 14
MORE TO COME FROM THE PUBLIC HEARINGS