Posted by In 2017 AMAWA led a discussion in our city on the poor state of morale and high rate of burnout amongst medical staff at our Children’s hospital.
Rather than assertion and name calling we conducted a survey into many parameters of doctor experience. This was inspired by our doctors in training who had for some years been conducting a health check of our training hospitals with huge amounts of work and increasing sophistication.
The data that we got back enabled us to influence media, politicians, other doctors and bureaucrats. In the end there was an Inquiry held and senior management changes have resulted in measurable linear improvements. Anecdotally senior execs now await these report cards with some anxiety.
Our Doctors in Training now have a long series now of report cards into the state of play for docs and you can see how good they are at identifying where advocacy is best applied in the example below from this year. (Questions on this can be directed to dit@amawa.com.au). The standard is exceptional for ANY workplace and the authors (Dr Rebecca Wood etal) should be applauded for showing us how it is done.
Senior staff surveys should be used in the same way as a powerful advocacy tool – we know the executives and their bosses will pay attention and make changes. Doesn’t matter if they believe in treating people decently – we will force them to do it anyway.
