The overwork and bullying culture facing many medical trainees is unacceptable but changing that workplace culture will take time, the Royal Australasian College of Physicians (RACP) says.
The College has released a statement mirroring concerns raised over the working conditions faced by trainee surgeons from the Royal Australasian College of Surgeons (RACS) following a media storm around accusations of the appalling registrar workloads and abuse by senior staff and managers.
RACP president Associate Professor Mark Lane said the organisation had “zero tolerance for such behaviour” and improving workplace culture involved “shared and overlapping areas of responsibility” with colleges
“While there is much that has been done to improve the working hours and culture in medicine, more needs to be done to address the untenable working hours and unacceptable behaviour in hospitals and training sites”.
Media attention has focused on hospital working practices following articles written by Dr Yumiko Kadota, a former plastic and reconstructive surgery registrar. She described how a workload of up to 70 hours per week and being on call for 180 continuous hours at Bankstown Hospital led to her quitting and leaving her “broken” physically and mentally. When she raised concerns with management about sleep deprivation and being unsafe to work she was told to “stop being an emotional female”, and that the exhaustion “was good for her”.
Her story “The ugly side of becoming a surgeon”, re-published earlier this month, led to widespread outrage at her treatment, bringing focus to the plight of unaccredited registrars without specialist college back-up. It also led to proposals from the RACS to withdraw accreditation from the hospital’s training system, not to mention a social media storm of outrage.
Doctors-in-training representatives are now calling for an independent audit of doctor works hours.