AMA VICDOC Spring 2023 - Magazine - Page 29
Minister Mark Butler…called upon state
governments to resolve these actions.
…His genuine concern was that unless things
change, doctors will leave the system.
Having a Federal Minister express these
views… should… give doctors conf idence
that their complaints are validated.
HAYDEN STEPHENS
My first introduction to a hospital, my
first clinical placements as a student, my
intern took her own life. And her work
was not necessarily the main cause, I’m not
saying that that’s what caused it, but what
I am saying is that when you work to the
point of exhaustion, your resilience is not
there to cope with all of the other stresses
that you experience through your life. And
I know you know other people as well that
you’ve heard of, that you’ve come across
through this work that have taken their
own lives. And I think you can take a lens
and look at this and say “Look, this isn’t
just about unpaid overtime: this is actually
about saving lives of patients and saving
lives of doctors”.
HAYDEN If you want to see just one
thing that happens from these class
actions, what would that be?
KATE I want to see a healthy workplace
culture for doctors. That’s what I want to
see: doctors being able to be happy to go
to work and enjoy it.
HAYDEN Yeah. There’s a culture among
some health services of having little
appreciation of what their workforce
is doing or what work is actually being
performed. Speaking from my own
experience working in large organisations,
cultural change does not come about unless
there is a concerted effort by the leadership
to change it.
KATE You’ve created a registration site
called doctorovertime.com.au. Why should
doctors sign up to the campaign?
HAYDEN There’s something to be said
of strength in numbers. A strong signup
number will signal to your health service
that this is a serious issue for junior doctors.
It’s important that that signal is loud and
it’s clear.
The second reason is that your
registration offers real assistance to us in
understanding how systemic the problem
of underpayment is across each particular
health service.
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