Sign the petition
It's Tom Rolley here for GraduateMedicine.com.
I wanted to jump in around a petition that you hopefully know about.
If you don't, then this is to bring your awareness to this petition.
Now, this petition is about AHPRA going ahead with an idea that they will basically publish all complaints against doctors, even if those complaints are investigated and are found to be false and ridiculous or whatever's going on, that they're not actually saying anything wrong was done by that doctor.
They're still going to go ahead and make that complaint against that doctor's name on the register on the AHPRA website.
So this petition's saying, "Hey, this is ridiculous. How can you publish this stuff against a doctor when there is not even anything that they did wrong?"
Now, and you might think, "Oh, well, most complaints are actually legit, they are all going to be upheld."
No.
According to doctorportal, where I was sent this link from, they say at least 70-plus percent of these are dismissed, so you're looking at seven out of 10 of these shouldn't be on this website.
Now, to me, this is getting at the tip of the iceberg that it's actually pretty hard to be a doctor, that we have in a lot of sacrifice to get to where we are.
I mean, its years of study.
I think for me, it was three years science, four years medicine, two years in the hospital, three years GP, and then another year for medical acupuncture.
So whatever that adds up to, it's a lot! (13 years!!!!)
It's a lot of time we're studying away from family, having to make sacrifices to actually be a GP.
And all of us in the medical fraternity are actually in that position that we've put in hours and hours and years and years of our life to actually get to where we're at.
And then AHPRA come along going,
"You know what? Someone's having a bit of a whatever, they're like, Oh, I'm just going to complain," and even though there was nothing wrong done by that doctor, that's still going to go up on their list as a complaint.
So what can we do?
There's a petition being run right now and the link is here.
So go ahead and click on that, fill that in, target is 15,000.
When I went in and put it in my name, it was at 14,194.
They're aiming for 15,000 so we're pretty close on that.
And really, if this goes ahead, I mean my take on all this, hey at what point are we going to say, "You know what, AHPRA? We're coming after you."
We have a right to protect our role.
All of the things that we put into our lives, and you guys are just sitting there in your little white ivory towers deciding these things that make no sense so I'm like
"You know what? We should, if this continues and the petition doesn't work, then, the AMA, RACGP, whatever the medial unions are to combine and we go boom, let's go after this and get this resolved"
Because what's at stake here is not just these complaints but it may be the tip of a iceberg that sends a doctor over the edge and they start heading into thoughts of suicide or burn out.
And suddenly, this is a real problem.
The suicide of doctors is a real problem so we need to be aware of this, actually take action, go and sign the petition, and also in a bigger picture kind of thing, making sure that if you're a doctor, looking after yourself.
So maybe it's a little point here just to check in and say, "Hey, where am I in my own health, my body, am I exercising, am I doing any meditation or prayer practices to connect into spirituality or what the heck this whole life thing's about.
Where am I looking to invest or spend time with my family, my loved ones, my partner, my wife or my husband, and actually support that relationship as well as checking in around yes, my work as a doctor, am I making sure that everything's taken care of there?"
As I said, the step from here is to go ahead and click that petition, sign it if you haven't already, share it and let's get this thing sorted out for the well being of the profession.
All right, see you soon on another training soon!
