System stress may bring a flock of notifications
AHPRA’s ‘protect the public’ mantra puts all the burden on the doctor, none on the complainant.
Victoria’s “Code Brown”, which allows healthcare workers’ leave to be cancelled as staff numbers reel with the impact of covid, will take an obvious toll on the public hospital workforce.
But less obvious is another sinister stressor that lurks around the edges and impacts doctors and other health care workers, often when least expected: a complaint from a patient they have tried to help amid the chaos.
We’d all like to presume that extraordinary times call for compassionate measures, but when it comes to the regulators, this never enters the equation. Take the process whereby GPs using telehealth to see their patients during the pandemic have earned compliance letters.