Wellbeing: Networks & support

The Australian Doctors in Recovery (ADR) Group is a fellowship of medical, dental and veterinarian men and women, including students, who share their experience, strength and hope with each other that they may solve their common problem and help others to recover from addiction, including alcoholism. The only requirement for membership is a desire to stop drinking and using. ADR has no relationship with NSW Medical Council, AHPRA or any other authority.
Our primary purpose is to stay clean and sober and help others to achieve recovery. We undertake to maintain the anonymity and confidentiality of all our members.

Free, confidential peer support for health professionals in Australia and New Zealand.

We are healthcare professionals aiming to raise awareness of the power of civility in patient care and the impacts of incivility on teamwork and patient outcomes.

Long Lives, Healthy Workplaces is an initiative of the Welfare of Anaesthetists Special Interest Group and Everymind, with support from the Australian Society of Anaesthetists (ASA) and additional funding leveraged under The Prevention Hub.

To encourage feedback and input from anaesthetists and the wider medical profession, they have set up a secure online discussion group for the Long Lives, Healthy Workplaces project. If you’re interested in joining the chat group please fill in the form on their website. Note: ASA members are automatically added to this discussion group once they log onto the members website. If you are an ASA member, you don’t need to fill in the form above. Simply log in and then go to https://asa.org.au/asa-forum/

The project has a toolkit to support better mental health and wellbeing for anaesthetists and anaesthetic trainees.

This toolkit is a resource to support anaesthesia departments and individual anaesthetists to operationalise a framework they can put into action.​

The national Doctors’ Health Alliance emerged in 2022 with the mission of improving the health of the medical profession for the good of the Australian community.

This Alliance has evolved from the Australasian Doctors’ Health Network (ADHN) that has been in existence for over 25 years and has been the key forum for doctors’ health programs across Australia and New Zealand to shares resources, research and programs. The ADHN has hosted the biennial Australasian Doctors’ Health Conference during that entire time.

Beyond Blue provides information and support to help everyone in Australia achieve their best possible mental health, whatever their age and wherever they live.

The National Mental Health Survey of Doctors and Medical Students was conducted with the aims of:
• understanding issues associated with the mental health of Australian medical students and doctors
• increasing awareness across the medical profession and broader community of issues associated with the mental
health of medical students and doctors, and
• informing the development of mental health services and supports for the medical profession.

Good work helps mental health and wellbeing. It can contribute to your daily activity. Your sense of purpose. Your income. And your social connection. But poor working conditions can harm your mental health and wellbeing.

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Caring for your mental health is just as important as caring for your physical health.

This Way Up is a range of online tools and practical ways to support emotional wellbeing and protect mental health, that have been made freely available by Professor Gavin Andrews and a team of psychiatrists and clinical psychologists at St Vincent's Hospital. They also have really helpful responses to some common questions everyone is asking; just scroll to the bottom.

In 2017, the US National Academy of Medicine launched the Action Collaborative on Clinician Well-Being and Resilience, a network of more than 200 organisations committed to reversing trends in clinician burnout. The Clinician Well-Being Collaborative has three goals:

Raise the visibility of clinician anxiety, burnout, depression, stress, and suicide
Improve baseline understanding of challenges to clinician well-being
Advance evidence-based, multidisciplinary solutions to improve patient care by caring for the caregiver
The Clinician Well-Being Collaborative is proud to have contributed to the movement to address burnout by convening, publishing, and shaping the national conversation along the priority areas of leadership engagement, breaking the culture of silence, organisational promising practices and metrics, workload and workflow, action on consensus report recommendations, and sustainability.

ANZCA's dedicated Doctors' health and wellbeing page, which outlines the Doctors' Health and Wellbeing Framework, as well as other resources to support doctors and integrate supportive mechanisms within organisations.

As part of our ongoing support of our fellows, trainees and specialist international medical graduates (SIMGs), ANZCA has engaged the professional services of Converge International, a specialist in psychology, mental health and wellbeing who will provide a confidential and independent counselling and coaching service.

This toolkit is a resource to support anaesthesia departments and individual anaesthetists to operationalise a framework they can put into action.​

The Long Lives, Healthy Workplaces Toolkit Steering Group has prepared supplementary resources that we hope will help you to navigate the toolkit, and plan and implement a wellbeing strategy for your workplace.