Health bosses Govt need to get real over health exploitation

"Health bosses and government need to get real over exploitation of health professionals"

"Health bosses and government need to get real over the exploitation of health professionals," said Mr Ian Powell, Executive Director of the Association of Salaried Medical Specialists, today. Mr Powell was commenting on the concerns raised by the Nurses Organisation and Public Service Association about the recent survey which reported that 60% of nurses who quit do so because of burn-out or because they face unmanageable distress.

"Senior doctors can't do their work with such a level of burn-out and distress among nurses. Hospital specialists and nurses are professional colleagues. It is their inter-dependent collaboration and dedication to patient care that keeps our public hospitals going."

"Senior doctors are also under considerable stress. In an environment of shortages in public hospitals and increasing demands on them they are being over-stretched and under-supported."

"The efficiencies that are being achieved in public hospitals are largely due to exploiting their nurses and senior doctors to do more and more and more. Instead government and health bosses simply make embellished claims on doctors and nurses numbers. All this does is undermine the confidence of health professionals in those in charge of the health system."

"The government made a good move in setting up an agency to focus on health workforce development. But unfortunately it is preoccupied with searching for magic bullets rather than helping relieve the stress of public hospitals' most important workforce, their health professionals" concluded Mr Powell.

Ian Powell

EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR

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