Their union, the Association of Salaried Medical Specialists, recently surveyed its members in a repeat of a 2015 exercise into chronic workplace stress in the nation’s hospitals.
In the new survey, across New Zealand burnout rates had crept up 2%, but in the Southern District Health Board region they had soared more than 20%.
No other region had experienced such a surge in burnout, and it should be of grave concern not only for clinicians but also for patients, ASMS executive director Sarah Dalton said.
The national response rate to the survey was 45%, but more than 60% of Southern doctors responded, again the highest in New Zealand.
"Theorists sometimes think if you are burned out that you are less likely to respond to another thing, and therefore they might be under-reporting the problem — but that would be no cause for celebration either," Ms Dalton said.
"I think southern people have made a real effort to tell us what is going on."
Comments from southern doctors included:
- "Normalisation of long working hours that extend beyond contracted job-sizing."
- "Frustration is with management. Growing divide between management and those at the coal face."
- Frustrations are often about the system, e.g. operating lists insufficient for the service, managers constantly wanting to change processes that are working, inadequate physical space to work in, lack of good equipment.
- "Expectation that we will do extra work to catch up on Covid-19 delays without a clear idea of when we will have achieved the target."
In December, SDHB management flagged the issue of staff wellbeing at a board meeting.
Chief executive Chris Fleming said inquiries to the employee assistance programme had increased and he was concerned about staff welfare, while chief medical officer Nigel Millar said said he was extremely concerned about wellbeing issues and that those were not idle fears.
Ms Dalton said the research recommended sufficient staffing, proper access to leave, enough non-clinical time, an end to long hours and normalisation of overtime, more clinical resources, and more and better planning as ways to ease burnout.
"The World Health Organisation has recategorised burnout as an occupational syndrome, and what that means is that the emphasis needs to be on organisation-wide initiatives and not be down to what each individual does," she said.
"That can be helpful up to a point, but it’s not going to fix it."
Covid-19 had been an additional stress factor for clinicians, but Ms Dalton felt what the pandemic had done was shine a direct light on already existing problems such as long waiting lists and access to care.
"Yes, it has placed terrible pressure on some services. but at the same time it shows the parlous lack of resourcing and under-planning."
