Only 11 junior doctors at Dubbo Hospital took part in the statewide and influential 2018 Hospital Health Check, but their answers have boosted its reputation as a training facility.
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Dubbo Hospital emerged as the “third best performer in terms of overall results” from the second survey run by the AMA (NSW) / ASMOF (NSW) Alliance.
But it also revealed room for improvement with 36.36 per cent of respondents feeling “unsafe at work due to verbal or physical intimidation or threats from patients or staff”.
The same percentage of respondents answered “yes” when asked if they had experienced bullying, discrimination or harassment from another staff member.
AMA is an acronym for the Australian Medical Association while ASMOF stands for the Australian Salaried Medical Officers Federation.
Their alliance is improving working conditions for doctors-in-training with the 2017 survey leading to significant changes such as the introduction of a mandatory 10-hour break between shifts.
The 2018 survey featured the categories of overtime and rostering, access to leave, well-being, education and training, and morale and culture.
On Thursday co-chair of the alliance’s doctors-in-training committee, Dr Sanjay Hettige, provided a snapshot of the survey results for Dubbo Hospital.
“While it had a small number of respondents, Dubbo Hospital was consistently in the top five hospitals in the state on all of the categories measured,” he said.
“It had the best results for junior doctor well-being in the state and was the third best performer in terms of overall results.
“That said, about a third of respondents from Dubbo said they had felt unsafe at work due to physical intimidation or threats from staff or patients, and about the same proportion had experienced bullying.
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“One of the biggest problems facing doctors-in-training, aside from bullying, is unpaid unrostered overtime and Dubbo performed more than twice as well than the state average on that front, with 40 per cent of respondents from Dubbo saying they claim all their unrostered overtime.”
The 2018 survey involved 1351 or 20 per cent of doctors-in-training in NSW.
