2025

Doctors’ Health South Australia Program Evaluation Summary Report

Ensuring doctors are healthy is critical for maximising the quality and efficiency of healthcare provided to the community. Yet, doctors experience comparable, if not worse, health than the general population despite their strong health knowledge.

This arises from various barriers doctors experience when accessing healthcare, including:

• Having limited or no rapport with a general practitioner
• Being able to self-treat
• Having a high threshold of when to seek healthcare support
• Limited time to seek healthcare
• Concern regarding the confidentiality of medical services
• Practitioners having limited understanding of mandatory reporting requirements
• Professional stigma against illness
• Cultural expectations of self-sacrifice within medicine
• The fears regarding impacts of seeking help on professional registration

To address these barriers, doctors’ health services have been established both internationally and in Australia. However, there are limited published data evaluating the impacts of these services.

Doctors’ Health South Australia (DHSA) offers a unique model that provides a comprehensive suite of services to support doctors’ engagement with the healthcare sector. This evaluation was commissioned by DHSA to examine the DHSA program’s impact on the wellbeing of South Australian (and, to a lesser extent, Northern Territory) doctors and medical students.

You can read the summary report here.

2022

Preparing Interns for a Healthy Medical Professional Life Project

Doctors’ Health SA (DHSA) was keen to explore to what extent the physical, mental health and wellbeing of final year medical students changes during their intern year. DHSA applied for a Grant through the Perpetual philanthropic funds and were awarded a Grant to conduct a study to explore the impact of intern year. Ethics approval for this important study was also achieved.

The study invited medical students finishing their final year to check their health on two occasions; once just prior to commencing intern year and again mid-way through intern year to assess whether and why this may have changed. Each test included:

• a comprehensive medical, nutritional and psychological assessment with an experienced General Practitioner and

• a VO2 max aerobic fitness assessment with an Exercise Scientist.

"This an exciting and important study and we look forward very much to your participation." Dr Roger Sexton, Medical Director, Doctors’ Health SA, Intern Project Lead.