COVER STORY

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Longer hours

Dr Betty Ge, an AMA ACT board member and ACT representative on the AMA’s Council of Doctors in Training said the findings signalled ongoing deficiencies with the culture and working conditions at Canberra’s hospitals. “In the ACT, our trainee doctors work longer hours than their interstate peers and that may help explain why they have more concerns about patient safety,” she said. “These things are all interconnected.”

On average, trainees at Canberra Hospital worked 50 hours a week – slightly down on previous years, but above the national average of 46 hours. Calvary respondents worked an average of 45.5 hours per week.

Regarding patient safety, 75% of junior doctors at Canberra Hospital agreed there was a culture of proactively dealing with such concerns in their workplace – a 10 percentage point improvement compared with 2019, but below the national rate of 82%. Calvary Public Hospital experienced a decline on this measure, from 80% in 2019 to 72% in 2022.

While satisfaction with the quality of clinical supervision has risen at Canberra Hospital over the last four years (now 84%, compared with a national rate of 86%) there has been a consistent decline on this measure at Calvary. Only 68% of Calvary respondents rated the quality of their supervision as good or excellent, down from 79% in 2019.

Wellbeing

Only 49% of respondents from Calvary Public Hospital agreed with the statement ‘My workplace supports staff wellbeing’ in 2022, a major decline from 76% in 2019. This compared to a rate of 62% at Canberra Hospital, a slight improvement on last year, but still well below the national rate of 77%. Dr Ge said AMA ACT had repeatedly raised concerns with Canberra Health Services about doctor wellbeing, but the problems persisted. “These figures reflect hospital-wide problems, affecting nurses as well as doctors,” she said.