The mental health and wellbeing of doctors is a critical enabler of and risk to the sustainable delivery of healthcare in Aotearoa New Zealand. Doctors are a critical specialist workforce which takes many years to train after graduation and cannot be readily recruited or replaced. They are currently at increasing mental health risk, with unprecedented levels of burnout and moral injury. Professions can manage change, but ongoing uncertainty is debilitating.
Dangerous levels of stress placed on hospital doctors, including surgeons, are caused by factors within the control of Government and its health agencies:
- long work hours and poorly controlled shift patterns, including vacancies, that impact particularly on acute surgery required day and night
- under-resourcing and unsafe workloads, yet planned surgical waiting lists continue to grow
- uncertainty, hiring freezes, cost-cutting, restructuring, and indications of further substantial cuts in the public sector healthcare workforce.
We drew attention to the Wellbeing Charter for Doctors developed by 18 Australasian medical colleges in 2021, including the responsibility of Governments to have doctors’ wellbeing at the core of healthcare strategy and leadership accountability, identifying and acting on risks including organisational factors.
Dangerous levels of stress placed on hospital doctors, including surgeons, are caused by factors within the control of Government and its health agencies:
- long work hours and poorly controlled shift patterns, including vacancies, that impact particularly on acute surgery required day and night
- under-resourcing and unsafe workloads, yet planned surgical waiting lists continue to grow
- uncertainty, hiring freezes, cost-cutting, restructuring, and indications of further substantial cuts in the public sector healthcare workforce.
We drew attention to the Wellbeing Charter for Doctors developed by 18 Australasian medical colleges in 2021, including the responsibility of Governments to have doctors’ wellbeing at the core of healthcare strategy and leadership accountability, identifying and acting on risks including organisational factors.