AMA WA Hospital Health Check 2025: Doctors detail experiences of bullying, harassment in damning report

Almost a third of doctors in training have experienced bullying, harassment or discrimination — and almost half have witnessed it — a damning report by the Australian Medical Association of WA reveals. The alarming numbers from the survey of more than 1400 of the State’s future doctors released on Tuesday also found more than a third feared negative consequences for reporting inappropriate behaviour. The AMA WA’s Hospital Health Check 2025 said while it’s the first time there hasn’t been a single F grade on the scorecard, “there are still many areas of concern and plenty of room for further improvement”. International medical graduates were almost twice as likely as other survey respondents to report experiencing discrimination, which the AMA noted “with significant concern”. The 2024 scorecard revealed major concerns around bullying, discrimination, and sexual harassment, and how frequently these behaviours were not being reported. And despite the AMA urging employers to “review and improve reporting mechanisms” to “improve their ability to investigate and address these issues”, the results have not translated and in some cases become worse. “The overall average across all employers for respondents experiencing bullying, sexual harassment, and discrimination has remained unchanged from last year (30 per cent), though the prevalence of respondents witnessing these behaviours overall has increased to 44 per cent compared to 39 per cent last year,” the report said. “There has been a general increase in prevalence of these behaviours across the health system in the past 12 months.” It said PathWest, WA Country Health Service, Women and Newborn Health Service, and the East and North metropolitan health services have all scored worse. “Concerningly, both PathWest and WACHS scores are significantly worse this year, with PathWest scoring 45 per cent (compared to 62 per cent in 2024) and WACHS scoring 61 per cent (compared to 78 per cent in 2024),” the report stated. It means more than 50 per cent of PathWest doctors in training experienced such bullying — the worst across all services surveyed. While staff morale and culture had generally improved, the wellbeing results highlighted the sinister underbelly of a stretched health system. This was also evident in the feedback regarding fatigue management, rostering and training, with “many optional comments by respondents stating they have felt unable to raise concerns with rosters and excessive work hours (including being rostered 24/7 on-call)“. There continued to be a “lack of adequate work time” provided for mandatory training, which the AMA WA said posed a potential workplace health and safety risk. “It is encouraging to see that, similar to last year, all Employers have further improved in this area, with SMHS being the most improved (45 per cent in 2025, 26 per cent in 2024) followed by WNHS (42 per cent in 2025, 24 per cent in 2024),” it said. “However, the scores overall remain concerningly low, which as we noted last year, indicate either a significant prevalence of mandatory training not being completed, or DiTs (doctors in training) undertaking this in their own time without appropriate pay —anything less than 100 per cent is cause for review and potential concern.” Treasurer Rita Saffioti responded to questions about the report on Tuesday, saying that she understood doctors faced “incredible hardships” every day. “I haven’t seen it (the report), I know that in relation to the EBA that was recently settled through Minister Simone McGurk, that we’re working in relation to those EBA conditions on how we can continue to support, in particular, junior doctors in the system,” she said. “Look, hospitals are hard places to work. They are under incredible stress and we will continue to work with the doctors with the AMA to support them to make sure that they want to stay in the system and help delivering in our system.” The State Government agreed to a deal with the medical organisation for wages and conditions of all public hospital doctors in late 2024. Shadow health minister Libby Mettam said “doctors, just like any other public servant, deserve to work in a safe and supportive environment”. “When inadequate staffing, bed blocks and delayed upgrades are already putting hospital staff under immense pressure, the government should be doubling down on its efforts to ensure staff do not have to endure such an unhealthy workplace culture,” Ms Mettam said. “This level of bullying and harassment in an office environment would raise serious alarm bells, and unions would be demanding action from their aligned members with the Cook Labor government.” Premier Roger Cook said on Tuesday workplace culture in the health system was a “long-term piece of work”. “We know that we need to continue to ensure that the workplace is safe, particularly for young doctors in training,,” he said. “The culture in our hospitals is a key outcome and focus for the health service providers, and we continue to do a lot of work around that, particularly for doctors in training who are at the beginning of their career.” The Premier said while the report acknowledged improvements, “we always know that we can improve more”. “Doctors and nurses are a vital part of our world class health care system,” he said. “Hospitals are great buildings, but they’re not healthcare facilities without the doctors and nurses that work in them.” Health Minister Meredith Hammat said she will meet with AMA WA to discuss how health services can improve. “But clearly any level of bullying or harassment is unacceptable, so that is something that we’ll have a closer look at,” she said. “We have a meeting with AMA, we’ll talk to them about what they see as some of the ways we can improve, we’ll continue to work with them, continue to work with health service providers because we do need to see improvements.”