One Canberra Hospital employee was fired and another forced to resign in just one month in late 2018 due to bullying allegations.
Subscribe now for unlimited access.
$0/
(min cost $0)
or signup to continue reading
Documents obtained under freedom of information laws revealed almost half of all incidents reported to ACT Health between September and November last year were bullying or harassment related.
Out of 48 workplace incident reports received by ACT Health during the three-month period, 18 related to bullying allegations while a further two cases were harassment.
The documents also showed two allegations of sexual harassment within ACT Health were reported, although one of the investigations was closed in October 2018.
The outcome of that investigation was not known.
Of the investigations that were completed during the time period, no action was taken by ACT Health in 18 of the bullying and harassment cases.
A further two were referred to further investigations, while six received counselling.
In meeting minutes signed off by director-general Michael De'Ath in September 2018, a new method of resolving complaints and bullying allegations was proposed by the directorate due to previous approaches being "overly adversarial".
"The [current] complaints management approach is focused on establishing if misconduct has occurred and is not geared towards early intervention or the resolution of the issue itself," the meeting minutes said.
"Where complaints result in investigations, both complainants and the respondents lost agency over the process, which by its nature results in findings of fact rather than a resolution to the satisfaction of both parties."
Staff within ACT Health had previously said they did not trust current methods of reporting bullying, which was done through managers or HR.
ACT Health agreed to adopt a new model to resolve complaints as a result, with the promise of funding an employee advocate, modifying the preliminary assessment system to prioritise early intervention and to discuss reporting processes with the ACT Public Sector Standards Commissioner.
Workplace safety reports for the directorate also revealed multiple serious incidents involving staff at Canberra Hospital.
Among them was an employee working in surgery and oral health who suffered a stroke while attending to an aggressive patient in the ward in January 2018.
In another incident reported to ACT Health in October 2017, one patient smashed a window on level four of Canberra Hospital and fell onto the roof of a building two storeys below.
The documents showed occupational violence was on the rise within ACT Health for 2018, with an average of 130 incidents reported each month between January and June last year.
More ACT Health employees reported incidents of mental stress to WorkSafe in 2018 than the year before and was the most common type of incident reported by staff to the workplace safety body.
There was an average of 38 incidents of mental stress reported by ACT Health employees in 2018 compared to an average of 32 the previous year.
ACT Health staff admitted in the report it was becoming increasingly difficult to accommodate staff medically after returning to work from an injury.
"An inability to find suitable duties within medical restrictions continues to be one of the major challenges for line managers in ACT Health," the document said.
"Increasingly, managers are finding themselves under budgetary pressures as they have to find suitable duties for returning injured staff to non-substantiative positions while at the same time back filling the role to ensure the work is done."
