2 Nov 2018

Doctor burnout tackled in upcoming national conference

From Afternoons, 1:16 pm on 2 November 2018

People working in the medical profession, which is anchored in the principles of kindness and compassion, often don't get very well looked after themselves, according to resident doctor Kat Foster.

Many doctors are fatigued, burnt out and mentally unwell – and junior doctors, known as residents, are particularly vulnerable, she tells Jesse Mulligan.

Dr Kat Foster

Dr Kat Foster Photo: Supplied

This month, the New Zealand Resident Doctors' Association (NZRDA) is holding a national health and wellbeing conference to address the problem. 

Dr Kat Foster, who is Vice President of the NZRDA, joins Jesse Mulligan on her day off to talk about burnout in medicine. 

Recently, resident doctors negotiated a change to their working hours which limited the number of consecutive days they could work.

This has helped, but understaffing remained a big problem, Dr Foster says.

"We're overworked, there's no way to sugarcoat that. There's more clinical demand than ever, there's more work to be done in a normal day than there ever has been before as people live longer, are sicker in general and the population continues to expand."

The system has very little slack in it, she says.

"Fatigue continues to be an issue, there's a lot of burnout, there's bullying, there's harassment and these are all issues we really need to focus on."

Studies here and internationally show bullying is a "big problem" in medicine.

"There's a lot of competitiveness required to move through medicine, you have to be the best of the best at all times and that doesn't necessarily bring out the best in people.

"There's a lot of pressures from managers and other clinical staff to achieve certain goals and when that doesn't happen sometimes people don't react to that in the best possible way."

The medical profession isn't equipped to support employees who are struggling, she says.

"One of the things we're lacking in a kindness and compassion-based industry is kindness and compassion towards our colleagues. We aren't particularly skilled or experienced in looking out for one another. That's one of the things we are seeking to address with this conference - how to spot a colleague in distress and how to help them, instead of how to use it to your advantage to get ahead and use it as ammunition to punish them later."

Dr Foster says she's seen many doctors reach the point where they couldn't function professionally anymore – and sometimes worse.

"We've had a few people commit suicide, physician suicide is a growing and prevalent problem. Around the world, if you are a woman you are about ten times more likely to commit suicide if you're a doctor than if you are in the general population. In men, it is also a significantly increased independent risk factor."

The nature of the job means doctors are skilled at masking inner turmoil, she says.

"Medicine puts an emphasis on hiding your emotions. We can't take on the suffering of others so we become very skilled at blocking ourselves off and that can mean that people are suffering in silence."

The conference will be an opportunity for people to open up about a very real but often hidden problem, she says.

"To be able to stand up in a conference and say, 'I suffered, I struggled, I worked through it. This is how I did it' gives people a safe space to go actually I'm not coping that well and there's an opportunity to remove some of that judgement.

"Anything that makes us struggle is going to make us struggle to look after our patients."