Medical practitioners have a negative view of the national regulator when it comes to trust and operating style, according to social research findings released by the Medical Board of Australia.
When asked which words they associated with the Medical Board, doctors chose terms such as bureaucrats (39%), controlling (17%), rigid (16%), ‘poor communicators’ (15%) and secretive (12%) at significantly higher rates than other regulated health professionals.
The findings, from a national survey that sampled 461 registered medical practitioners in November 2018, also showed that doctors were significantly less likely than other health professionals to choose positive perception terms such as ‘for practitioners’ (18%), ‘decision makers’ (18%), competent (11%), trustworthy (8%) and advocates (6%).
Doctors were neutral in their perception of the Board when it came to terms such as regulators, necessary, administrators and ‘for the public’.
And in more bad news for the Medical Board, fewer than half the doctors (44%) said they felt confident that the National Board was doing everything it could to keep the public safe (compared to 56% of all registered health practitioners).
Similarly, just over half of doctors (52%) said they trusted the Medical Board, compared to 62% of other health practitioners positive views of their boards.