EVIL CLOWNS

In March and April 2015, we conducted confidential, telephone interviews with DoH employees about bullying. This was done for three reasons;

1. It had been brought to our attention that the late 2014 'Have Your Say' online questionnaire had possibly been corrupted by inaccurate and over reporting in order to increase the response rate and skew results to the advantage of the health department.

2. We wanted to see what we would find out and share it. And,

3. To understand how big and issue bullying is the the department of health for non managerial clinicians.

Over a period of seven weeks we randomly called three territory hospitals and ten remote health centres located across the territory. We called at different times of the day and night and we spoke to six groups of self identified health professionals.

These were; doctors, registered nurses, midwives, enrolled nurses, aboriginal health practitioners and physiotherapists. We stopped once we had spoken to 100 clinicians with low managerial responsibilities. It took 37 days to complete the interviews.

What were the findings?

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There were a lot of findings but here are some of them;

1. 64% of respondents advised that they had been bullied at work or had witnessed the bullying of a colleague in the previous 12 months.

2. 32% said they had seen a colleague resign or leave because of bullying in the department of health.

3. 41% said they are considering leaving their jobs in the next 12 months because of lack of support or bullying in the northern territory department of health.

4. 71% said they don't trust their manager.

5. 81% said they would resign rather than make a complaint to HR about bullying.

6. 76% agreed or strongly agreed with the statement, 'The health department has a bullying culture, doesn't support its staff and needs to take allegations of bullying by its managers more seriously.'

7. 11% said they had dealings with human resources in relation to complaints including bullying. Of those 11%, 1% said they were satisfied with the HR response and outcome.

Here are a few quotes from respondents:

'My manager has been bullying me for years. I'm not sure how much more of it I can take. I've seen her do it to so many people. I'm 60 now and I'm thinking I'll have to retire early just to get away from her.' Remote Area Nurse.

'I've worked here for 5 years. I've seen more bullying and been bullied myself more in those 5 years than in 24 years working for Queensland Health. It's almost always the management who do it. Someone decides they don't like you and then it starts. I've seen really good people pushed out for no reason at all.' Remote Area Nurse.

'They sent a spy out to me once and he apologised and told me he was asked to write a secret report about me. Then they sent out a psychologist thinking they'd get me on mental health grounds. He advised me I was being bullied and that he'd put it in his report. After that they left me alone. But I know they will come back again. Remote Area Nurse.

'They denied me all of my rights and when I complained they made me wait for an outcome for months. The outcome was the usual cover up. Typical HR.' Hospital Nurse.

'I'm afraid I'm not going to say anything because I'll get upset and start crying if I talk about what the management did to me. Sorry.' Hospital Registrar.

'You should hear the way XXX speaks about remote nurses. One rang up the other day asking for some support because she was under the pump and was on her own and after she hung up, XXXX said out loud, 'She's an idiot. I'm not sending her any help. Who does she think she is?' Remote Area Nurse.

'XXXX treated me like a dog. She took staff away from me and tried to run the clinic down and force errors. I never complained because it never gets fixed when people complain. I just waited for a position to come up somewhere else and I applied and transferred' Remote Area Nurse.

'I'll only work on the agency now. I used to work direct for them, but, no thank you. I'll never do that again, in fact, I'd rather starve or work interstate than take a permanent contract with nt gov.' Midwife.

'I'm being bullied right now by my manager. It's gone on for months. I've done nothing wrong but he is micro managing me. He's done it others too. He uses the same tactics. I've applied for jobs out of the organisation. I can't wait to leave.' Hospital Nurse.

These, of course, are our colleagues. They have families, partners, kids, mortgages and the rest of it. They often work in dangerous, remote places away from the comforts of their usual lives. They sacrifice a lot and often, get treated like shit by way of thanks from the people they trust to support them.

Some of the stories that we heard disturbed us so much that we maintained contact and provided support and advice. We suggested self referral to inter state clinical services where necessary. We wouldn't trust departmental managers not to rifle through staff personal clinical records.

Concerns related to us included false allegations, denial of natural justice, cronyism, abuse of the MERIT process,weak and disinterested union support, sham grievance investigation processes by the OCPE and application of double standards. We will deal with these in future posts.

Other concerns that scream out for attention are the terrible numbers relating to satisfaction with the HR department. One explanation for this could be that they are considered far too close to management and are therefore not impartial.

The results we charted were worse than any other similar research that we have read. For example, the Workplace Bullying Institute in the USA published results that indicated a 4% satisfaction rate with human resources across the country.

Just over 3O% of respondents in our study who stated they reported bullying to the HR department and did not even receive a response from them.

We'll post a deeper analysis on the results in a few weeks time.

Thanks