Wonder why emergency doctors are quitting? Spend a day in my shoes

Burnout is not just a plot line in TV dramas like The Pitt. It is real, and it is affecting emergency physicians in every emergency department across Australia. Emergency medicine is rewarding work. It’s a real privilege to care for patients and families during their hardest moments. However, this can also come at a real cost to the physician.

As this masthead revealed this week, a report by the Australasian College for Emergency Medicine found that close to two in five emergency physicians are considering leaving emergency medicine due to workplace stress. While that is not the case for me, this shows some of the challenges we face. I am the college’s NSW branch chair as well as an ED doctor. This is a typical day.

6am: My phone alarm wakes me all too soon, but as many working mothers know, it’s essential to creep out of the house without making eye contact with the kids if you want to squeeze in a quick jog. This ritual is essential for maintaining my sanity. As they say, “apply your own oxygen mask first”.

7am: A flurry of dressing kids, breakfast, packing lunches and checking drop-off plans. My phone bleeps. Someone’s called in sick. I check rosters and make calls. Mondays are always packed in the ED after filling up with patients over the weekend. We can’t afford to be down on staff. A text confirms I’ve managed to plug the gap. A sigh of relief.

8am: Handover: bright-faced day staff ready to be tasked, while the weary night team hands over essential details of the dozens of patients in beds, the waiting room and ambulance stretchers. A quick visual count tells me there are more people waiting than beds. Bed block, the scourge of EDs, is forcing many patients to spend over 24 hours waiting for a bed on the ward. Hopefully, we’ll see some movement as the inpatient teams mobilise all resources. The night team’s done a valiant job, but an ambulance call – a heart-failure patient with severe breathing difficulty – has left them spent. Time for a team huddle to clarify the skill mix of the day crew, who will manage an airway for the very unstable patient. We have highly skilled emergency medicine training registrars, some locum doctors and interns dipping their toes into ED. Time to review the sickest patients, check the waiting room and triage, and identify who is well enough to go home.

9am: Reviewing X-rays and ECGs when the ambulance phone rings – a 14-year-old boy has been hit by a car while riding an e-scooter. No helmet, head injury. Deformed arm. Chest injuries. I assemble the team in resuscitation in response to the trauma call. A clinical