AHReform has an active Facebook giving you regular update on events affecting the healthcare industry, especially the endemic culture of bullying and harassment of doctors and other healthcare providers.
Thank you to those people who have actively supported our mission to end bullying in the healthcare industry.
Through greater public awareness, AHReform hopes that one day, AHPRA and the Medical Board will find the courage and wisdom to resolve this serious problem.
Mr Fletcher stated that the Medical Board of Australia and AHPRA have listened and recognised the need to respond further to the issues of bullying, harassment and vexatious complaints. He suggested five ways, including the goal to enable the Medical Board to take further action against a practitioner who makes complaints purely to damage another registered practitioner.
AHReform now wants to ask Mr Fletcher that nearly three years on, what he, AHPRA and the Medical Board have done to make those vexatious complainers accountable for the damages done to the victims of vexatious complaint?
Dr Pallavi Bradshaw, an ophthalmologist and medicolegal consultant, recently published a very good article entitled ‘Accepting error in an imperfect system’. Dr Bradshaw eloquently stated:
‘Doctors have to take informed risks all the time, which usually pay off but on occasions they don’t. This begs the question why should we penalise the unfortunate ones when the risks do not pay off and when the outcome is likely down to a multitude of issues?’
She further went on and said: ‘I believe that if regulators and employers were to take into account the whole ecosystem doctors are unlikely to be singled out and ‘blamed’. We have often seen doctors punished for clinical errors and the outcome of some of these cases may have been different if investigators, experts, and courts understood human factors.’
The over-reliance of “breach of protocols” and the zealous approach in “punishing” doctors is a major problem in our healthcare system.
Modern medicine is already a complex set of decisions that got to be made almost instantaneously, laced with a maze of regulatory boundaries, working in an increasing toxic environment, scare resources and peer pressure, is a challenge to the sanity of the poor doctor.
That goes to show, doctors are human beings, some are stronger than others; and the weakest falls victim and sometimes die. It is under these conditions that in Australia one doctor commits suicide every 10 days; whilst the Americans has one doctor commits suicide every day.
The system sets an unrealistic expectation of doctors that they can withstand stress and trauma without getting mental illness or depression. Doctors are not super-normal but ordinary mortals who have acquired a set of skills. The failure of the doctor to do his/job should not be entirely attributed to him/her but a major part should be attributed to system failure.
Dr Anthony Pun, the President of AHReform asked: "Why are the people in charge of the system not ‘punished” and this creates a public perception that the doctor is the scapegoat of a failing system? Where is justice?"
Unless the administrators, the regulators and the court understand the complex nature of our healthcare system, doctors will continue to suffer in this pervasive blaming & punitive culture.
And no amount of mental health counselling and support for doctors will be enough without addressing the elephant in the room.
AHReform is seeking a constructive dialogue with AHPRA and the Medical Board. A national conference in Canberra by HPARA will be held on 8 June 2019 to address these issues.
For those people who have been or are victims of vexatious complaints, AHReform would encourage you to email AHReform about your case.
Do not suffer in silence.
You can contact AHReform via email: australianhealthreformgroup@gmail.com