SA Health Doctors' Wellbeing Report

The Hon. V.A. TARZIA (Hartley—Leader of the Opposition) (14:08): My question is to the Premier. What impact has the ramping crisis had on our public hospital medical workforce? With your leave, sir, and that of the house, I will explain.

Leave granted.

The Hon. V.A. TARZIA:The Advertiser has reported that the SA Health official doctors' wellbeing report has revealed alarming evidence about the workload crisis faced by SA's public hospital medical workforce, which is leading to physical burnout, occupational distress and personal distress from a broken system.

The Hon. P.B. MALINAUSKAS (Croydon—Premier) (14:08): The men and women who are serving our state in our health system are under pressure, and they are under pressure because of a growing level of demand that I don't think is going to disappear anytime soon. There are a number of forces that sit behind that demand. The one that I think concerns us all the most is the rapid growth in the number of aged-care patients that are stuck in hospital beds, even though they do not need to be there but simply just can't get access to an aged-care bed. It is a structural challenge that we are seeing around the country that simply must be confronted; otherwise we are going to have a hospital system full of people who don't need to be there. That is a function of the ageing of the population, but it is also a demonstration of the growth in demand.

The amount of pressure they are under is a reflection of that, but it is also true to say that what we are doing as a government is trying to make sure that the workload of our health professionals is manageable by making sure that we have the right number of health professionals in and of itself. That is exactly why, as the minister indicated, we are employing a lot more people to work in this system.

That comes at great expense, because obviously doctors are well remunerated—as they well should be, given their level of expertise and how much work goes into becoming a doctor. So it comes at a very considerable expense to the budget, and the Treasurer can demonstrate figures across a range of budgets that demonstrate that—including, no doubt, in the upcoming budget. However, it is not just doctors; it is doctors, it is nurses, it is allied health professionals, it is ambos—huge numbers are coming through the system over and above attrition.

One thing I think the men and women in our health workforce do know is this: that if they are under workload pressures now, imagine what it would be like if they didn't have those extra staff. Imagine if we had not employed, I think, something like 600 extra doctors over and above attrition. Imagine what ambulance response times would be like if, instead of investing in the Ambulance Service with more ambos, they were being cut. Imagine what pressure the system would be under, and the staff, the nurses, would be under, if we had not employed hundreds upon hundreds of extra nurses above attrition. Imagine how hard it would be to get an X-ray or any other basic scan if we hadn't increased the number of allied health professionals working within the system.

It would be an impossible situation; a difficult situation would be impossible if those extra staff had not been recruited. Of course, the reality is that those men and women in the health system were perilously close to that future because that was the policy of the former government. In fact, worse than that, it was the policy of the former government to actually cut staff in some circumstances. They were going to make more staff redundant.

What we know is that the policy contrast was very, very stark at the last election. The South Australian people—thankfully, in our view—elected a Labor government that is now recruiting at a pace that is unprecedented. Does that change the fact that there is more work to be done? Of course not, because there is a lot more work to be done, but at least we are starting from a higher base than what would otherwise be the case.