Immediate Past President SA Salaried Medical Officers Association & ASMOF SA Branch , Emergency Specialist Doctor working in SA. Tweets are my own.
Adelaide, South Australia
Joined July 2009
- Tweets16.4K
- Following3.6K
- Followers2.4K
- Likes20.3K
David Pope retweeted
Lyell McEwin ED at 205% capacity: 117 patients in a department with 57 treatment spaces.
@BBoyerMP
@ANMFSA
@acemonline
@sasmoa4doctors
This is appalling, yet so familiar. Hospitals with their Emergency Departments need to have the resources so patients are not left in waiting rooms to suffer outcomes like this. Where is the accountability of the health bureaucrats? abc.net.au/news/2026-08-14/d…
Still along way to go, but doctors are now well down the path of ending the hospital practice of unpaid overtime.
Doctor gets $165,000 payout as 1200 doctors finally compensated for unpaid overtime | AusDoc
ausdoc.com.au/news/doctors-g…
David Pope retweeted
This is (part of why) the brain fart Worker Comp Act changes in Vic in ~’24 were so regressive; revised Clause 6 alone undid decades of progress towards designing better work and workplaces, giving permission for PCBUs to revert to old status quo of burn-and-spit out workers #WHS
Burnout isn’t something you’ll find in a blood test.
When roles are designed around overload, low control, and constant pressure, the harm is structural—not medical. Fix the work rather than the worker.
#Burnout #WHS #PsychosocialSafety #OSH
safetyatworkblog.com/2026/04…
David Pope retweeted
EDs are critically overcrowded (Over >125% capacity):
Lyell McEwin 195%
Noarlunga 165%
Flinders 160%
Modbury 147%
Women's & Children's 137%
Queen Elizabeth 136%
Royal Adelaide 136%
@BBoyerMP
@ANMFSA
@SA_Ambulance
@acemonline
@sasmoa4doctors
Lyell McEwin ED has every assessment space occupied by admitted patients who all need to go to wards, but the wards are also full. Emergency assessments and care is extremely difficult.
Current Patients waiting for Beds in our Hospitals are:
LMH - 36 wait for bed
FMC - 28 wait for bed
RAH - 21 wait for bed
TQEH - 21 wait for bed
@BBoyerMP
@ANMFSA
@SA_Ambulance
@acemonline
@sasmoa4doctors
David Pope retweeted
EDs are critically overcrowded (Over >125% capacity):
Lyell McEwin 202%
Noarlunga 196%
Flinders 181%
Modbury 181%
Royal Adelaide 151%
@PictonChris
@ANMFSA
@SA_Ambulance
@acemonline
@sasmoa4doctors
David Pope retweeted
SA has the lowest number of medical staff per capita in all of Australia... we urgently need a medical workforce strategy to address this gap and plan for the future.
@PictonChris I'm sure QLD, VIC, NSW or TAS could share a copy of theirs to help get you started. Please & thanks
ALT Table showing medical staffing rates from the recently released Productivity Commission’s 2026 Report on Government Services. It shows South Australia has the lowest number of staff in public hospitals compared with the rest of Australia.
What? This should never happen. Hospital executives cannot (under the Health Act) direct the care of any person. This would be especially unlawful and unethical.
This behaviour is rife and getting worse. Until hospital executives and boards are held accountable for such behaviours, it will keep worsening. Its lose-lose for everybody. It's the biggest threat to safe patient care and safe workplaces in healthcare.
A hospital in Doncaster has lost a senior doctor simply because he had the courage to raise concerns in the interests of patient and staff safety.
This case exemplifies a disturbing pattern: when concerns about poor behaviour are raised, the Trust responds not with openness, but with disciplinary threats and attempts to silence. bbc.co.uk/news/articles/ckgj…
In my experience these reports to government from all the big accounting partnerships are riddled with errors and are of little value. Many millions of public money is wasted.
-Deloitte delivers report to government using AI which contained errors |... youtu.be/C17KWJ02Goo?si=sgK9…
David Pope retweeted
📰BREAKING📰
SafeWork NSW has stepped in to force Macquarie University to make work health and safety improvements to their consultation on proposed workplace changes.
These failures reveal a wider governance problem made visible thanks to @NTEUNSW members at MQ from the Faculty of Arts and the Faculty of Science and Engineering who spoke out about the harm of workplace changes to staff mental health and wellbeing.
Article 1️⃣: afr.com/politics/federal/aus…
Article 2️⃣: dailytelegraph.com.au/subscr…
Article 3️⃣: skynews.com.au/australia-new…
Working full time as a hospital doctor has become so very damaging to psychosocial health. Part time is the only option for many to remain well. Hospital workplaces for doctors are not safe.
Ok this makes me angry. To imply doctors are going part time for locum money is beyond insulting. I never thought I would drop down to part-time... and then I burned out in a wild blazing mess.
As an ED trainee, I'm often involved with the worst day of a patient's life and it takes a toll. For me, going PT is self-preservation cuz otherwise I might lose my gaddamned mind.
Compliance with Work Health and Safety laws with enforcement applies to medical workplaces & doctors.
Four Corners fallout: speak up about medical workplace abuse or be complicit | insightplus.mja.com.au/2025/…
David Pope retweeted
This has always been about safety - for patients, the public & staff. No other safety critical industry, with catastrophe possible so frequently - and mostly avoided - has regulators with such scant disregard for the experts - doctors - we depend on for that safety.
Regulation must not blur the lines between doctors and non-doctors.
We’ve written to the GMC following the Leng review 👇
We've also been granted permission to appeal our judicial review case against the GMC. The court says our appeal raises important issues for public safety.
ALT Letter to Dame Carrie McEwan and Charlie Massey (GMC) from Dr Tom Dolphin (BMA chair), on BMA letterhead paper outlining the findings on the Leng review, discuss next steps with Government and offer an opportunity for GMC to acknowledge mistakes.
David Pope retweeted
Current Patients waiting for Beds in our Hospitals are:
RAH - 41 wait for bed
LMH - 26 wait for bed
FMC - 20 wait for bed
@PictonChris
@ANMFSA
@SA_Ambulance
@acemonline
@sasmoa4doctors
Emergency Departments must not be dangerous for staff and patients. Why aren’t Work Health & Safety laws enforced? ‘Disaster situation’: Nurses in tears as ED pushed past breaking point - Courier Mail apple.news/AhgBCov2sTtulcZvK…
David Pope retweeted
Breaking: Fat Is In, Sugar Is Out
This is no small matter—what's happening to the dietary guidelines in the US right now via the FDA. I've spent much of my career arguing exactly what they are now saying.
The FDA will change the saturated fat guidelines. These were based on a flawed but plausible hypothesis: that saturated fat was causal in heart disease and many other chronic diseases by implication.
Even though the evidence was never really there, it was plausible. But in the end, it's not true—certainly not supported by the evidence, including robust RCTs and meta-analyses of those RCTs.
It's such a big deal because the medical establishment's failure to embrace lower-carb approaches, carb restriction, keto, and whatever brand you want to put on reduced refined carb and total carb ways of eating, in the context of most of the population having insulin resistance, has been catastrophic for public health.
Finally, for me, after decades of fighting this often seemingly futile fight, there is a turning point. Let's hope the partisan politics of the US doesn't sink this.
Thanks to the good work of @bigfatsurprise
The new Dietary Guidelines will drop the caps on saturated fat!!
That's what FDA Commissioner @DrMakaryFDA implied yesterday 👏👏👏👏 (My head is spinning--he's citing research directly from my book!)
youtube.com/watch?v=qym5dAQD…
"Since Ancel Keys in the 1960s decided to demonize saturated fats with a hypothesis that was supported with data that was incomplete and methodologically flawed in his Seven Countries Study
The medical establishment started with a robust debate...in the NEJM and the National Academy, but that debate ended in the 1970s. Because there was groupthink. The medical establishment locked arms and walked off a cliff together, deciding the reason for heart disease was that people were eating skim milk and no-fat and low-fat foods.
IGNORING the role of refined carbs and so many other things that drive general body inflammation which is the precursor of fat deposition in the arteries
That dogma still lives large and you see it in the food guidelines that we are revising.
We are going to ensure that the guidelines are based on science and not medical dogma."
Hard to believe...I've been working on this issue for 20 years. We are poised for a historic change.
In LMH ED with 57 cubicles max, there are 52 admissions of patients to the hospital but no bed for them. 45 patients in the waiting room many urgently needing assessment but no space. Some 113 pts. Very unsafe for pts and staff
David Pope retweeted
Just leaving the LMH ED after an inspection 40 admitted patients 4 out of 5 resus rooms full. Told inpatient wards have “been working their guts out all day” longest stay patient in the ED was told 72 hours - waiting rooms are full - this is not sustainable @SAHealth