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The doctor needs help (Herald Sun, opinion)
24 January 2008
I look at my watch through bleary eyes. I eventually manage to focus. 3am. I’m in the on call room at the hospital and I’m clocking up my twentieth hour.
It seems an eternity since I walked through the doors just as the pips were announcing the 7am news.
Those 20 hours have been literally full on: ward rounds, outpatients, operating in theatre.
And all the while the pager keeps beeping with the promise of more work from emergency and elsewhere.
The fatigue has to be experienced to be believed.
I’ve gotten this far on coffee, adrenaline and all the other stress hormones my body can muster, but I swear I’m actually starting to drift off to sleep.
Cannot do that.
Must not do that.
Patients to fix.
Then the pager beeps again.
A trauma in emergency.
That was in 2001 and 2002. I was an advanced trainee in general surgery.
Working 100 hours a week was not unusual, and the notion of a healthy lifestyle seemed an impossible dream.
I shudder at the thought of what I had to do, but that is the way it has always been.
Excessive hours. Unreasonable hours. It’s still the way the system works.
Aircraft and pilots have been around for about 100 years but are new kids on the block compared with the medical profession.
Their hours in the flight deck on duty are strictly regulated to allow them to fly safely.
That’s not to say that doctors make unsafe decisions when they are tired, but similar standards would seem sensible.
I left surgical training in 2002 because of the crazy hours and unbelievable working environment I was expected to tolerate.
There have been some changes in the way registrars do night shifts.
The AMA has made gains in improved working conditions for doctors and an improved culture in the medical profession, but there is still a long way to go.
Apathy, ducking the issues and politicking by governments in the past 20 years have all resulted in a profound shortage in doctors across the nation.
Meanwhile, the population is growing, and growing older.
The end result is an incessant demand for all of us doctors to work until we drop.
I have managed to control my hours a bit better, but this is not an option for many of my senior and junior colleagues
I am now an emergency physician in a very busy emergency department.
My hours involve lots of shift work, and when I’m there it’s usually incredibly busy.
I would love to have more doctors and nurses to work with to ease the load a little.
I would love to have the beds and resources to treat my patients the way I would like.
I keep aiming for what I call work-life balance, for myself and my colleagues, and ultimately, for my patients.
By Dr Stephen Parnis
Victorian Medical Directory
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