An experienced psychiatrist at the Canberra Hospital was forced to take stress leave for two months because of staff shortages, an inquest into the suicide of a patient heard last month.
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The doctor, who has worked in psychiatry for 41 years, told the May 1 hearing that colleagues said he should withdraw himself because he was burning out.
He also said there was a high turnover among the mental health nurses in the hospital, again because of burnout, but conceded the problem went beyond Canberra.
The psychiatrist said that the ACT had a problem recruiting and retaining people, and blamed in part better working conditions in other states.
He also pointed to chronic psychiatrist shortages across Australia and the world.
Inquests into the death of four patients - three in mental health wards - who died by suicide in the Canberra Hospital within two years are being heard in the ACT Coroner’s Court.
One patient who took her own life was a 48-year-old woman, a patient in the mental health assessment unit waiting for a bed in the adult mental health unit, who died on March 20, 2015.
The psychiatrist, who had reviewed the woman on March 18, judged that she was not at imminent risk of suicide, and that she was already in a safe place.
It is the practice in the assessment unit that patients are observed at half-hour intervals.
Questioning at the inquest turned to staffing levels, one of the topics the coroner will consider, and the psychiatrist told the court chronic staff shortages took their toll on the doctors and nurses.
They were, as of May, about eight full-time psychiatrists short, he said.
Counsel assisting the coroner Sarah Baker-Goldsmith prompted the psychiatrist on the consequences of being so short-staffed.
“The consequences are that the - people are working under a lot of stress, and after 41 years in psychiatry I took two months of stress leave last year,” he said.
“I stopped working in the Mental Health Assessment Unit, and the short stay unit because myself and my colleagues said, ‘You should withdraw yourself because you're burning out.”
He told the inquest there was a problem in Canberra recruiting and retaining people.
“We have not been able to recruit people outside the ACT,” he said, adding that most psychiatrists had come from outside Australia.
The most recent person who was recruited from Victoria resigned within two years, he said.
He said it was partly because other states offered better working conditions.
“It's not only doctors … if you look at the nursing staff in the mental health unit, there's a lot of turn over. I think nurses burn out. This is not only true for ACT and Canberra,” he said.
The psychiatrist said he was distressed by the death of the patient, and told the court it was the first patient he had lost in more than four decades of psychiatry.
He spoke of how difficult it is to predict suicide risk. "Time and again people have been proved wrong," he said.
Ms Baker-Goldsmith asked the psychiatrist if there was anything he would suggest to the coroner.
The doctor, who now works in a separate area of ACT health, pointed to chronic bed shortages and the resourcing of mental health treatment in the community as areas that needed improvement.
The ACT government has recently announced a $22.8 million boost to Canberra's mental health system, including community based residential beds and 24-hour supported accommodation.
The mental health assessment unit no longer exists. A new assessment unit still attached to the emergency department, with a liaison psychiatry unit, continues to provide similar services.
The inquest continues later this year.
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