As a hospital specialist I am often saddled with the additional supervision of junior doctors to make up for sick colleagues. It’s exhausting and dispiriting to keep being asked to make up for absentees when my work is already highly demanding.

Hospital management hasn’t acted on the epidemic of low staff morale that fuels the absenteeism. The public hospital system is stretched to beyond breaking point. My personal wellbeing is now precarious and I feel that the team player in me is being taken advantage of. There is threadbare staffing as it is on a good day and I am not hopeful of a fix. Any thoughts?

I know from our back-and-forth by email that this is a problem that causes you enormous frustration. And I can understand why. As you’ve said, your job is gruelling even without supervision responsibilities, and feeling that you’re being unfairly asked to take up slack in this area would be incensing.

I spoke with Professor Paul Dugdale from the School of Medicine and Psychology at Australian National University about your situation. He addressed the problem at the heart of your question from three perspectives: your personal circumstances, what management might do to improve the staffing system, and the factors that might be affecting all public hospitals around Australia.

“Public hospital medical specialist work is rewarding but very demanding,” Professor Dugdale said. “Our correspondent, like many doctors, seems very committed but exhausted and dispirited. They may want to re-look at their work-life balance, consider what supports are available and build in regular breaks from work.”

Professor Dugdale said that, apart from anything else, management needs to address the situation in your workplace for safety reasons.

“Long hours and the high intensity of dangerous work does stress the workers involved, and leads to an increase in adverse incidents. Tackling this is a key task for management and must be done with the medical specialists themselves, including empowering them to address the structural problems in their own domains,” he says.

“Our correspondent has identified un-collegial behaviour in their close colleagues. This should be tackled. The unit head – who usually oversights the specialist rosters – should be able and willing to do this.”

Professor Dugdale talked about his own experience in the early days of his medical career. He said he participated in an informal arrangement where he and his colleagues were able to use sick days when they felt overwhelmed, while understanding there was a responsibility to make sure nobody was lumped with an unfair work burden.