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AMA Victoria calls for urgent action on Public hospital working conditions
AMA Victoria has warned of an impending crisis in the state’s public hospitals should the government refuse to support a package of initiatives to make public hospital medical practice more attractive.
Doctors representing Melbourne’s major hospitals will stop work tomorrow to attend a meeting to discuss the possibility of professional action to highlight concerns about the struggles of providing medicine in a public health system that has treated an extra 35 000 patients this year.
AMA Victoria has proposed a series of initiatives designed to promote quality medical practice. Some of these issues focus on supporting doctors in improving their skills (appropriate training time and time for study, allowing dedicated time for research and teaching activities), with others about flowing industry standards.
The Indemnity crisis is forcing many of our most senior specialists to rethink their public hospital commitments as soaring costs make public hospital practice less viable.
AMA Victoria President Dr Mukesh Haikerwal said feedback from AMA members made it clear that the primary concern of doctors was sustaining a public health system that focused on the quality and accessibility of patient care.
“Public hospitals are overcrowded and have occupancy rates of virtually 100 per cent, spare beds for elective surgery are becoming alarmingly scarce”
“Instead of making the public hospital system more attractive by following industry standards the government is proposing to cut the existing conditions of medical practitioners.”
“Victorians should be aware there is the potential for a significant exodus of doctors moving from the public to the private system. AMA Victoria simply wants measures introduced to preserve a quality medical community in public hospitals.”
“If the public hospital system continues to ask doctors to do more and more with less and less, the public will be the ultimate losers because doctors will be enticed to the booming private sector” said Dr Haikerwal.
President of the AMA Victoria Doctors-In-Training Subdivision, Dr Joseph Sgroi is keen to emphasis that a viable medical community in public hospitals is central to the AMA Victoria claim.
“It is about the provision of quality healthcare in the public hospital system and the conditions essential to ensure this. Extra demand has been placed on the public system this year and we want to make sure doctors are properly resourced to deal with that” said Dr Sgroi.
Dr Sgroi cited the issue of unrecognised unrostered overtime which occurs across the board in Victoria ’s public hospital system as an example of something that can compromise the quality of healthcare.
“The work of a doctor can seem never ending and we need some constraints on hospitals to stop unsafe excessive hours” said Dr Sgroi
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