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Staff at Victoria’s larger regional hospitals are more likely to be physically and mentally exhausted than their peers at major urban trauma centres.
Analysis of hospital staff surveys by The Age has prompted calls for regional hiring sprees and tougher health and safety rules years after stressed and fatigued healthcare workers made headlines during the pandemic.
Albury Wodonga Health had the highest proportion of workers grappling with burnout last financial year, according to The Age’s analysis of every publicly available staff survey for Victorian-run public health services.
Forty-seven per cent of workers at Albury Wodonga Health, which services patients in north-east Victoria and southern NSW, said they had experienced burnout. Seven per cent said they felt completely burnt out – which meant they wondered if they could go on and were realising they “may need to seek some help”.
In comparison, just 3 per cent of Victoria’s entire public sector workforce reported feeling completely burnt out during the 2024-2025 financial year.
Albury Wodonga Health was contacted for comment.
Healthcare workers tend to have much higher rates of burnout than deskbound bureaucrats because of the stress of caring for sick, injured and sometimes violent patients. But burnout is considered especially serious in healthcare settings because it can affect staff performance and patient outcomes.
Burnout, according to Beyond Blue, is the feeling of emotional, physical and mental exhaustion brought about by excessive demands at work or in someone’s personal life. The mental health organisation says high workloads, a lack of support, and bullying and harassment can all contribute to burnout.
Public health professor Karen Willis, from Victoria University, said burnout had emerged as one of the biggest challenges for Australian hospitals. She suspects the level of burnout is underreported due to lingering stigma, and healthcare workers not wanting to let down their colleagues.
“People who are burnt out struggle to provide optimal levels of care,” Willis said. “COVID-19 illuminated the cracks that were already in the system. We need new ways of supporting the workforce to do the job. Otherwise, we lose them,” Willis said.
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West Gippsland Healthcare, based in Warragul, had the second-highest proportion of workers experiencing burnout last financial year. Forty per cent of staff who responded to the survey reported feeling some kind of burnout, while one in 20 said they were completely burnt out.
Bendigo Health, Colac Area Health and Grampians Health rounded out the five health services with the highest percentage of burnt-out staff. Thirty-six per cent of staff at each of those health services reported feeling burnout, while between 4 per cent and 5 per cent said they questioned whether they could continue working.
In metropolitan Melbourne, The Alfred had the highest proportion of staff who had experienced some kind of burnout, at 34 per cent.
Small rural health services tended to have much lower levels of burnout. Terang and Mortlake Health Service in the state’s south-west, and Boort District Health, north-west of Bendigo, had the lowest burnout rates – at 13 per cent and 14 per cent respectively.
Victorian Healthcare Association chief executive Leigh Clarke said workplace stress and burnout was a complex issue and there was no single solution.
“We know that this time of year can be especially difficult for health services across the state,” Clarke said.
“There is an opportunity to reduce these pressures by supporting Victorians to access care in the right setting, particularly at a time when emergency departments are busy. This might include greater use of virtual care such as the Victorian Virtual Emergency Department and non-urgent care, and we look forward to continuing investment from government in these areas.”
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Australian Nursing and Midwifery Federation secretary Maddy Harradence said more than 13,000 more nurses were needed, and a third of those were required in “already stretched” rural and regional health services.
“We know some nurses and midwives are struggling with burnout – they are managing high patient loads, patients with increasing comorbidities and complexity, requests to work extra shifts, and they face unacceptable levels of occupational aggression and violence,” Harradence said.
The union boss added that health should be made a “regulated industry” – like the male-dominated mining and construction industries – for the purposes of the Occupational Health and Safety Act.
“Then we would start to see prosecutions against hospitals and aged care services for failing to protect their nurses and midwives.”
Opposition health spokeswoman Georgie Crozier accused Labor of ignoring workforce shortages for years, particularly in rural and regional areas.
“Instead of planning and managing workforce needs, Labor is cutting graduate nursing and midwifery positions,” Crozier said.
In September, The Age revealed that thousands of Victorians finishing their nursing degrees this year faced the prospect of unemployment, despite the government paying for their university fees, because of higher-than-expected workforce retention.
A spokesperson for the Allan government acknowledged that government could do more to tackle burnout, despite it being primarily the responsibility of health services.
“That’s why we’ve made significant investments,” the spokesperson said, pointing to $47 million toward occupational violence and training initiatives and establishing Safer Care Victoria’s worker wellbeing centre.
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