Saving lives has become harder amid a mass walkout of doctors who have been driven to breaking point as public hospitals struggle with millions of patients. Source: AAP.
Australian Catholic University academic Xavier Symons says a stretched workforce does not take the decision to strike lightly for the first time in 27 years in New South Wales without it being driven by a deep sense of ethics.
More than 3800 surgeries, appointments and cancer treatments have been cancelled after hospital doctors walked off the job over staggering workloads and lagging workplace conditions.
Dr Symons says the sense of duty towards patients has caused doctors to suffer “moral injuries” as they feel disempowered to do their jobs.
“With increasing bureaucracy and increasing kind of systematisation of health care…what you’ve seen, is that health professionals feel like they can’t really do the best by their patients,” he told AAP.
“Our doctors and nurses and allied health professionals are just incredibly stretched as well, so it’s kind of hard for them to spend much time at all with patients.”
Dr Symons, director of ACU’s Plunkett Centre for Health Ethics, said being alert to how any mistake could be fatal to patients and then being on-call after a shift needs to be managed with more holistic strategies.
“The issue with burnout is not so much that doctors aren’t responsible enough, it’s that they’re too responsible… they can’t switch off
“They’ve got this heightened sense of responsibility, and they give and give but eventually they just get to a point where they can’t physically go on and there’s a sense of disillusionment that comes.”
Doctors from more than 30 NSW hospitals went on strike on Tuesday, demanding a 30 per cent salary increase and guaranteed breaks.
The walkout is ongoing until late Thursday.
FULL STORY
Tired doctors cannot ‘switch off’ from saving patients (AAP via Daily Mail)
