Your brilliant career: how new WHS laws protect every doctor

Amid unprecedented medical workforce pressures, many doctors are rethinking their futures. Yet new WHS laws provide the tools to protect our wellbeing and our careers — if we use them. This piece urges every doctor to lead by example: know the law, speak up about poor working conditions and other abuses safely, and advocate for better health system resourcing — together.

“I have been treated poorly by too many senior colleagues to count. Disrespect is normalised as a mechanism for achieving clinical goals. It is not just tolerated, it is leveraged. The threat of conflict silences dissent. Crippling workloads continue to expand out of the fear of what saying ‘no’ might do. Junior doctors internalise a belief that they are inadequate, that they deserve condescension or intimidation”. – Doctor in training

Severe financial strain across the health system has created widespread patient access blocks and unsafe workloads (here, here, here). Many doctors are working under intolerable pressure in hostile environments where burnout and abuse have become normalised, particularly in largely government funded public hospitals and general practice (here).

These overwhelming pressures are fracturing the medical profession itself. Internal conflicts, bullying (here, here), and other misconduct are eroding our morale and reputation (here, here, here). Amid this dysfunction, a quiet exodus is underway. While comprehensive data on dropout rates across specialties remain limited — itself a serious gap — too many doctors are reducing their hours, abandoning training pathways or retiring early (here, here, here, here).

This article explores ways to protect hard-earned medical careers by supporting one another and uniting in advocacy for better health system resourcing, to prevent further haemorrhaging of our workforce.

Compulsory compliance with transformational new WHS laws

“Human resource managers and counsellors may find it threatening to take on highly influential bullies and may take the easier approach of persuading the victim to accept guilt and humiliating disciplinary action… How can this be stopped when bullies hold very influential positions and enjoy elite status with immunity?” – Senior doctor

Groundbreaking new Work Health and Safety (WHS) laws have the potential to protect medical careers by transforming workplace conditions (here). But non-compliance, particularly by senior doctors in leadership or other influential roles, can destroy them (here).

The Medical Training Survey has repeatedly identified senior doctors as key perpetrators of workplace abuse, with little progress over the last six years. Despite risking severe consequences such as personal liability and reputation damage, termination, suspended medical registration (here), and civil or criminal proceedings (here), some perpetrators continue to bully, sexually harass and discriminate against trainees — behaviour too often overlooked (here). However, when senior doctors ignore or dismiss abuse, this not only perpetuates fear and dysfunction where courageous voices are punished, perpetrators protected, and good doctors leave (here) — it places their own careers at risk for failing to exercise due diligence.

The WHS reforms impose clear legal duties on all employers — including medical employers — to address both psychosocial and physical hazards, and to proactively prevent and manage mental and physical injuries to employees, contractors, and visitors. Failure to exercise due diligence or take action can attract heavy personal fines, reputational damage, termination and, in the most serious cases, imprisonment (here, here).

However, meeting new WHS requirements can be challenging because many hazards in health care are so pervasive they are often dismissed as “part of the job”.

Doctors repeatedly exposed to psychosocial hazards (low job control, high job demands, poor support), physical hazards, or discrimination, racism, sexual harassment, bullying or any form of violence, can face serious risks of mental and physical injury. Over time, these risks threaten not only wellbeing but career longevity.

To protect their own careers, senior doctors must ensure their hospital, health service, or practice fosters a respectful, “speak-up” culture by continually updating, implementing and communicating evolving WHS standards (here, here). Medical workplace harm is no longer just a cultural issue — it is a legal one (here, here).

Under-resourcing and unsafe medical staffing levels as root causes

Proactive prevention and management require major attitudinal change and stronger advocacy for better resourcing of medical staffing levels.

Senior doctors may inadvertently perpetrate abuse of doctors in training by turning a blind eye to unsafe rostering and other poor working conditions. Under the Model Code of Practice for the Healthcare and Social Assistance Industry, rosters and budgets must include adequate cover for periods of increased patient demand, after-hours work, and all leave entitlements. Expecting remaining doctors to absorb unsafe workloads when colleagues take leave in skeleton-staffed environments breaches WHS law (here).

“After a miscarriage, I was asked about family planning in supervisor meetings. I’m now 28 weeks pregnant with a high-risk pregnancy and felt pressure to return to work within 48 hours of an antepartum haemorrhage. I’ll try to work to 38 weeks – not to burden colleagues and not to give my head of department a reason to overlook me after maternity leave”. – Doctor in training

Failure to protect doctors who are pregnant (here, here) — or any doctor with special health needs — exposes organisations and medical leaders to investigation under discrimination laws (here). In the event of a work-related death (including foetal or maternal death), recently expanded industrial manslaughter laws may apply if there is grossly negligent or reckless breach of WHS duties such as failing to respond to reports of significant rates of pregnancy loss and complications in doctors in training (here).

Speaking up and seeking help should enhance — not damage — a medical career

“How do you stop misconduct when the bully holds status and immunity? After I left, I learned a senior doctor had smeared me with an unfounded complaint. I’d normalised the subtle digs and controlling demeanour as ‘just him’. It was bullying”.  – Doctor in training

The ongoing barriers deterring reporting of psychosocial hazards, physical hazards or abuse remain a major cause of poor morale, mental and physical injury (here, here) and attrition in our workforce (here). Under-reporting keeps medicine in the dark about the true magnitude and causes of disillusionment (here).

“I raised patient-safety concerns. Junior staff confided in me. I reported safety issues — registrars unsupervised in procedure rooms. Instead of support, I was abused and ostracised by my supervisor and allies. HR forced me to resign. I felt broken — it was devastating.”  –  Retired doctor

Such testimonies expose a culture where reporting unsafe care or abuse can destroy a medical career. As a result, many doctors, particularly trainees, remain silent for fear of retaliation. While whistleblower protections usually apply when reporting unlawful conduct, they remain under-used.

Every doctor must therefore be equipped with clear guidance on how, when and where to report incidents safely (Box 1) (here). Speaking up is not about encouraging more vexatious complaints, workers’ compensation claims or litigation. Its purpose is prevention, protection, and early intervention — so no one is harmed, and no career is lost (here).

Of course, minor tensions should be resolved collegially where possible, with peers presenting a united voice on WHS concerns (here). When this fails or the matter is serious, anonymous reporting mechanisms must be in place to identify “hot spots” and to address systemic WHS risks and hazards at a medical leadership level.

A turning point for the medical profession

“The reality is that there is a fundamental problem that our profession has been unable to address…. Healthcare operates on the fuel of disrespect.”  – Doctor in training

Transformational Work Health and Safety (WHS) laws now require every doctor to model leadership and professionalism through:

• Attitudinal change: Notwithstanding the intense pressures on senior doctors in positions of leadership, they must call out other colleagues who do not model respect or support their peers, particularly trainees.
• WHS and human-rights literacy: WHS knowledge is career armour. Please consider distributing the link to SafeDr to doctors at your workplace (here).
• Speak-up collectively and safely: Anonymous reporting systems are essential to document the scale of abuse in medicine and to identify effective systems solutions (Box 1).
• United advocacy for better resourcing of WHS: Medical organisations must demand funding of safe medical staffing levels to improve WHS standards across the whole health system as part of the National Health Reform Agreement.

New WHS standards are complex and compulsory, but they are not a threat. They enable doctors to seek help, speak up safely and protect patients, colleagues — and brilliant medical careers.

The next article in this series is entitled “Industrial Manslaughter in Medicine – it only ends with us”

Clinical Professor Leanne Rowe AM is a GP with specialised clinical expertise in the comprehensive assessment and management of physical and mental injury. In the past, she chaired public and private hospital boards, gaining senior medico-legal expertise in work health and safety. Among her many board roles, she has served as Chair of the RACGP, and Deputy Chancellor of Monash University. She recently developed the SafeDr website (here). She will give a keynote address on this topic at the Australasian Doctors Health Conference in Melbourne on 29 November 2025.

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