Plight of SA doctors captured in new film

A documentary film will be launched next month to highlight the working conditions junior doctors like Dr Amy Salvesen, 27, experience.

A documentary film will be launched next month to highlight the working conditions junior doctors like Dr Amy Salvesen, 27, experience.

Published Aug 31, 2016

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Cape Town - South Africans will get a glimpse into the lives of doctors who have to deal with 30-hour shifts, trauma cases, casualties, short-staffed emergency units and long queues of irate patients when the documentary, Doc-U-Mentally: Last Doctors Standing, premieres at the Jozi Film Festival next month.

The film is set mainly at Ngwelezane Hospital in Empangeni, KwaZulu-Natal and features doctors from diverse backgrounds working in different disciplines, namely the emergency, paediatric, trauma and surgery units.

Viewers will see what doctors see on a daily basis – gunshot wounds, stabbings, near drownings and trauma caused by road crashes – and how doctors manage to stay awake and alert throughout their shifts.

The documentary has also been entered into several international film festivals, including the Public Health Film Festival in the UK and the Denver Film Festival in the US.

Filmmaker Francois Wahl is a chartered accountant by trade and is married to a doctor. This inspired him to commence filming in May last year.

The doctors featured helped crowd-fund the project, which Wahl produced and directed.

“Junior doctors must be insane to work under the conditions they do,” he said, referring to the name of the documentary.

“I was inspired to tell the story after experiencing almost first-hand what these young doctors went through.

“My father, wife, brother and many of my friends are in the health-care profession and let me tell you, the effects of sleep deprivation and the hostile environment they have to work in have damaging repercussions – and it is this that I wanted to bring home to the viewer.”

The film features Dr Saishrien Rasen in the surgery unit, Dr Yenziwe Ngema in orthopaedics, Dr Wanele Ganya in paediatrics, Dr Amy Salvesen in emergency medicines and Dr Lourens Wahl in casualty.

“With very little director’s influence from my side as I wanted to produce an unadulterated film, showing things the way they truly are.

“The main focus was to show the race against time for these doctors and how working 30-hour shifts impacts their mood, performance, stress and anxiety levels and personal safety,” he said.

The doctors were willing to participate in the documentary because they wanted to not only lead the charge in addressing the long working hours, “but to also shed light on the psychology behind the plight of junior doctors, and to bring to the fore other issues that too need to be addressed, such as the shortage of medical personnel and the HIV dangers they face”.

The documentary also drew the interest of Pharma Dynamics, a Cape Town-based generic pharmaceutical firm, who with the support from the SA Medical Association (Sama), the KwaZulu-Natal Film Commission, funded the film.

Pharma Dynamics spokeswoman Mariska van Aswegen described junior doctors as the “hard-working backbone and future of South Africa’s health-care system and more should be done to ensure safer working conditions”.

“With each passing year, junior doctors are given more responsibility. Working long and anti-social hours causes physical, mental and emotional exhaustion, which often puts doctors (and their patients) in perilous situations.

“One can understand the anger and frustration felt by many junior doctors at this time and hopefully the film will encourage other legislatures to follow in the footsteps of the Western Cape's recent decision to reduce the working hours of health-care professionals in the province from 30-hour shifts to 24-hour calls,” she said.

Doctors’ long working hours came under the spotlight after the death of a Cape Town medical intern, Ilne Markwat, in a car crash in June.

She hit a barrier before hitting two other cars on the N1 after a 26-hour shift at Paarl Hospital.

The provincial Department of Health has since reduced the doctor shifts from 30 hours to 24 hours, while the HPCSA has also limited shifts to reduced the hours to 26 hours.

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