During November we were very excited and privileged to present and exhibit at the biennial Australasian Doctors’ Health Conference held in Fremantle.

The conference theme was “Creating a Healthy Workplace”, featuring a wide range of local and international presentations.  Topics ranged from burnout through to peer support, and from culture and teamwork through to mandatory reporting.

From MIGA, Dr Roger Sexton and I presented on “Treating practitioner mandatory reporting – how far have we really come? Where should we go?”.  Covering the upcoming changes from clinical and medico-legal perspectives, we worked through hypothetical scenarios where a treating doctor would or would not consider a mandatory report.

The key messages of our presentation were:

  • Doctors must feel free to seek necessary healthcare
  • The mandatory reporting threshold is very high
  • Mandatory reporting is not about insightful doctors, who are not putting the public at substantial risk of harm
  • For a doctor ‘on the edge’ a mandatory report may be the best thing for them
  • Use senior colleagues and your MDO when making reporting decisions.

The presentation slides are available at https://ruralhealthwest.eventsair.com/2019-adhc/conference-presentations. 

Our presentation was a follow-up to the “Medico-legal disease” workshop that we presented at the previous conference, which outlined the effects the medico-legal processes can have on doctors’ health.

Megan Sheldon and Stephanie Mopin from our risk education and business development teams also represented MIGA at the conference, meeting a wide range of doctors and other people involved in the doctors’ health field.

We look forward to continuing our support of doctors and this important conference, next scheduled for Adelaide in November 2021 and hosted by Doctors’ Health SA.

Other resources

  1. MIGA’s presentation

    View the slides from MIGA’s presentation at the recent conference.

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