VICDOC Winter 2022 - Magazine - Page 45
INTERACT WITH US
AMA’s Dr Sarah Whitelaw
takes part in this story
focusing on healthcare worker
shortages, burnout and
increased patient demand
and the impact it’s all having
on the mental health and
wellbeing of doctors and other
healthcare workers.
“We've got this perfect
storm of staff shortages,
increased demand that we
knew that was going to come
and then also significantly
increased demand in terms
of COVID and flu. I would
describe what's happening
right now as a crisis. I work in
the emergency department
and our emergency
departments are absolutely
overflowing but the problem
is that we can't move our
patients out into hospital
beds that have enough staff
working in them to look after
patients safely. And because
we can't move patients out,
we can't offload patients from
our ambulances who are then
ramped outside our hospitals
for many hours and can't
respond to patients that
they need to see in
their community.
We know that the stresses
of medicine have significant
implications on the mental
health of junior and senior
doctors right throughout
the system.
So, the increased stresses
that the health systems that
they work in are under, you
can only imagine what that's
doing to their mental health.”
Editorial credit: rvlsoft / Shutterstock.com
VI CD O C WI NTER 2022
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