‘I loved studying medicine, but after two years in the NHS I wanted to get out of the country’ Harriet Treacy loved studying medicine at the University of Nottingham, but quickly became disillusioned with working in the NHS. After […]

Harriet Treacy loved studying medicine at the University of Nottingham, but quickly became disillusioned with working in the NHS. After her two year placement at a hospital in Weston-super-Mare, Bristol, any allure had evaporated and she was desperate to get out of the country.

“I’d just had enough of the toxic atmosphere,” she tells i at the Royal College of GPs’ annual conference in Liverpool, where she flew into from Australia only 24 hours ago. Dr Treacy had worked for the last two years in emergency medicine at hospitals in Newcastle and Sydney, both in New South Wales, and has witnessed enough of both health care systems to know the NHS approach to healthcare is, in her view, detrimental to both doctor and patient.

“The whole morale in the NHS is so low and it obviously rubs off on you, so you find yourself working in this environment that’s really toxic.” The i newsletter cut through the noise Email address is invalid Email address is invalid Thank you for subscribing! Sorry, there was a problem with your subscription. Dr Harriet Treacy

“I went to Australia because I didn’t know what I wanted to do, other than I certainly didn’t want to stay in the [NHS] system after just two years. You’re treated so differently over there. Doctors [of all levels] are on first name terms, they’ll talk about their lives at work and seem much happier. If you go into a hospital in the UK people aren’t having those conversations – they’re talking about exams, about stress, about workload.

“The whole morale in the NHS is so low and it obviously rubs off on you, so you find yourself working in this environment that’s really toxic, and you think: ‘Am I supposed to stay in this until I’m 60? Or 80 for my generation,” the 27-year-old says. “It’s just not sustainable, so I just got up and left. And loads of people I trained with have done the same thing.”

Earlier, at a meeting with primary care leaders, Dr Treacy told told RCGP chair Professor Helen Stokes-Lampard the main reason she had yet to even consider working in general practice in the UK was because “doctors are underinvested here”, but that the situation was no fault of theirs.

“You’re probably working in the same constrained system that I and others are working in,” she told them, adding that the lack of duty of care concerning doctors’ wellbeing in the UK is having an impact on their mental health.

“In Australia, they don’t just talk about mental health, they actually act upon it. For example, we have things called Mental Health Day in Australia, where people just take a day off. There’s an awareness that people have families, they have lives to lead. The whole mentality is different,” she said.

“I look at the people above me and they don’t look like they are enjoying themselves. They look burnt out and I’m sure as hell not going to get burnt out as they are. We have to stop feeling guilty about saying the employee – the doctor – comes first, rather than the client – the patient. Until we put the GP, the doctor, at the heart of health, we can keep trying to make the patient healthier, but it’s never going to be sustainable.”

‘Overworked and burnt out’

Her message earned her applause from some of the delegates. Speaking to i afterwards, Dr Treacy says she and her compatriots were under no allusions that “everyone knew intern years are hard”, but the biggest factor in her decision to leave the UK was seeing how doctors just a few years older than her were coping.

“When I looked at the registrars, they were sinking. Then I looked at my consultants and they were sinking. They’re overworked, they’re burnt out. You think about getting through the tough patch, but then you hear from half the GPs here that many are trying to retire and get out. When the promise of better days isn’t there you start questioning ‘what am I doing here?’

Dr Treacy has set up a blog, itsabouttimedoctor.wordpress.com, chronicling her experiences of working in several varied health care systems to date – and her plans for the future. She has given herself a year to explore potential long-term options, including a course in linguistic therapy and is now in the United States for a couple of weeks to discover “a different way of doing general practice”, among other things.

“I’ve friends in the corporate world and, yes, they’re overworked, but they get rewarded. We work hard too and what do I get? I get a lawsuit if I overwork.” Dr Harriet Treacy

“It’s a multidisciplinary approach, instead of this GP-transactional approach here where all healthcare providers are working in isolation: so a GP has to refer you a physio, who then has to refer you to an occupational therapist, who then refers you to a dietician… For the patient, that’s just so fragmented, and it’s not got them at the heart,” she says.

“I’ve friends in the corporate world and, yes, they’re overworked, but they get rewarded. We work hard too and what do I get? I get a lawsuit if I overwork and nobody comes to my rescue and says ‘she was just really overworked’.”

Asked about Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt’s announcement earlier this year that doctors could be forced to work at least five years in NHS under plans for “home-grown” expansion, Dr Treacy says: “That’s very disappointing to hear that, because it’s a short term measure yet again. It’s the deluded concept that you can control people. You’re pushing people towards fear, rather than moving them towards hope.”