File image. Photo: RNZ / Diego Opatowski
Doctors are rating their working conditions as the same or worse than they were a year ago when Te Whatu Ora took over.
The Women in Medicine survey - released this morning - shows evidence of widespread malaise, exhaustion and low morale across the workforce.
Doctors said they did not feel they have been adequately consulted on health system changes and are not optimistic for the future.
A total of 936 doctors across primary, secondary and other facilities were surveyed about the current state of the medical workforce.
It found just 6 percent of primary care doctors and 11 percent of secondary care doctors had seen improvement in their working conditions since Te Whatu Ora was established.
Meanwhile, 55 percent of primary and 71 percent of secondary said their working conditions were worse, or much worse, since July 2022.
It also found only a small percentage of respondents thought working conditions would improve within the next year.
In June, Te Whatu Ora said it shared the aspirations of workers for an equitable health system that was sustainably staffed. While there was no quick fix for staff shortages, Te Whatu Ora said it was doing what it could, including moves to streamline recruitment of overseas staff and making it easier for nurses to return to practice.
The government in May released a strategy - developed by Te Whatu Ora and Te Aka Whai Ora - for making up the gaps in the health workforce.
However, Women in Medicine chairperson Dr Orna McGinn told Morning Report there was a real sense of fatigue and doctors could not currently see any improvement since the new system was put in place.
Dr Orna McGinn. Photo: supplied
"But even more worrying, what we found in the survey was that people had a very real sense that things weren't going to improve over the next year.
"The vast majority of doctors didn't see things in the workplace looking any better in a year from now either, which does raise the question of whether it's difficult to bring along a group of demoralised doctors and have them fully invested in the new system, because obviously it takes energy to change a complex system."
McGinn said the network had heard of doctors walking off the job, general practitioners leaving their surgery's and GPs "really struggling" financially.
Because there did not seem to be a "clear plan", it was hard for GPs to know what their role was in the years to come, she said.
"What we're asking for is greater consultation with the workforce, who after all, are trained in problem solving and decision making and can actually put forward an awful lot of the solutions as to what best practice in the system may look like."
The desire for a feedback process and better relationship with managers came through in the survey, McGinn said.
"There is still quite a difficult culture in an awful lot of hospitals that's coming through."
McGinn acknowledged that any large reform was going to take time - but doing it off the back of an "exhausting" pandemic did not help.
"The workforce had already been stretched to the limit of the Covid pandemic and then to bring on a complex management change process was always going to be quite difficult and the work, perhaps, was not done to consult adequately with the medical workforce and bring them along."
McGinn said doctors were trained to work alongside patients in partnership to co-design services that worked for them.
She suggested applying that lens to the health changes could be helpful.
