**Before you read on.** This article discusses workplace psychological injury and includes reference to a workplace suicide.
Doctors and medical students can reach **Drs4Drs** on **1300 374 377** — free, confidential, 24/7, and independent of employers and regulators. State services include **Doctors’ Health in Queensland** on **(07) 3833 4352**, the **NSW Doctors’ Health Advisory Service** on **(02) 9437 6552**, and the **Victorian Doctors Health Program**. If you are not a doctor or medical student, **Lifeline** is on **13 11 14**.
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Most practice principals think of work health and safety as sharps, spills, and the occasional aggressive patient in reception. Since 1 December 2025, every Australian state and territory has had enforceable obligations covering something broader: the psychological harm caused by how work is designed, allocated, and managed.
If you run a practice, a department, or a clinical team, you are a person conducting a business or undertaking, or an officer of one. The duty is yours, and it is proactive. It does not wait for a complaint.
This matters more in medicine than in most sectors. Health care and social assistance is one of six industries accounting for around 61% of all serious workers’ compensation claims nationally. The hazards the legislation names — high job demands, poor support, exposure to traumatic material, aggression from third parties, role ambiguity — are not exotic risks in a clinical setting. They are Tuesday.
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The claims data
Safe Work Australia’s most recent *Key Work Health and Safety Statistics* sets out why regulators have shifted their attention here.
| Metric | Mental health conditions | All serious claims |
| Serious claims (2023–24p) | 17,600 | 146,700 |
| Share of all serious claims | 12% | — |
| Median time lost (2022–23) | 35.7 working weeks | 7.4 working weeks |
| Median compensation paid (2022–23) | $67,400 | $16,300 |
| Change over the decade | +161.1% | — |
Read those middle rows as a clinician rather than an administrator. A psychological injury claim keeps someone away from work for a median of roughly nine months. Physical safety has genuinely improved over the same decade — the worker fatality rate fell — while psychological injury claims rose 161.1%, the largest increase of any injury category in the national dataset.
Return-to-work outcomes are also worse for these claims than for physical injury, and affected workers more often report stigma from colleagues and employers on the way back. In a small practice, that is not an abstraction. It is a colleague you will still be working alongside.
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Four decisions that define the duty
Performance management is a hazard
In late 2025 the Department of Defence was convicted and fined $188,000 in the NSW Local Court following the death by suicide of a 34-year-old Royal Australian Air Force technician. Comcare found he had been placed on four separate performance “work plans” within six months.
The controls the regulator said were available were all supervisory: training supervisors to recognise that a performance process is itself a psychosocial hazard, to identify when someone under one is at risk, and to know when to refer for medical assessment or suspend the process entirely. None happened. The court added an adverse publicity order requiring Defence to publicise the offence.
Any principal who has managed an underperforming registrar should read that list twice.
Inherently traumatic work triggers the duty early
In *Kozarov v State of Victoria*, the High Court considered a solicitor working with survivors of sexual offences whose role carried acknowledged vicarious trauma risk. The principle established is directly transferable to clinical work: where the work is inherently psychologically hazardous, the employer’s duty to act can be triggered without waiting for the worker to show evident signs of injury.
Emergency, palliative, oncology, mental health, child protection, forensic and after-hours work all sit in this category. So does any role with sustained exposure to distressing material.
No system at all is indefensible
Court Services Victoria pleaded guilty and was fined $379,157 over a culture at the Coroners Court that contributed to serious psychological harm. The prosecution succeeded on a simple footing: there was no evidence of any hazard identification or risk assessment process. Not a weak one — none.
One complaint is enough, and investigations are hazards
In *Secretary, New South Wales Department of Education v SafeWork NSW (No 2)* [2026] NSWIRComm 1014, decided 2 March 2026, improvement notices issued after a single employee’s complaint were upheld. The Commission confirmed that a workplace investigation is itself a psychosocial hazard — its design, duration, what work the person does while it runs, and whether the organisation follows its own policy all carry WHS consequences. That only one worker had complained did not narrow the duty.
And in *Elisha v Vision Australia Ltd* [2024] HCA 50, decided 11 December 2024, the High Court restored a trial award of $1,442,404.50 for psychiatric injury after an employer breached its own disciplinary procedure, which the contract had incorporated as a binding term. The trial judge called the process “a sham and a disgrace”. That award sits outside the workers’ compensation system and is uncapped.
If your employment contracts reference compliance with practice policies, those policies may be contractually enforceable against you.
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What this looks like in a practice
Two clarifications that consistently catch practice owners:
An EAP is not a control. It is a support service downstream of the hazard. If the hazard is chronic understaffing and unrealistic appointment templates, the control is fixing rostering or templates — not offering counselling to the people breaking under them. Regulators expect higher-order controls first: changing the work, not resourcing people to endure it.
A survey is not a risk assessment. It covers one step of four. This is newly pressing: the free government People at Work survey, used by roughly 5,000 Australian businesses and more than 160,000 workers, is being decommissioned. New surveys closed on 1 July 2026 and platform access ends **2 October 2026**, after which the data is unrecoverable. Export anything you hold. Losing the tool does not reduce the obligation.
A working checklist for principals and supervisors
1. Name the hazards specific to clinical work — patient aggression and third-party harm, exposure to traumatic material and deaths, after-hours and isolated work, sustained job demands, unclear roles among juniors, and both performance and complaints processes.
2. Remember the third-party duty. Under the Queensland Code, the obligation extends to harm from clients, patients and visitors — not just internal culture.
3. Consult and record it. Ask staff what makes the role harmful, write down the answers and what changed as a result.
4. Fix the work before reaching for training. Rosters, appointment lengths, supervision availability, escalation pathways, debriefing after critical incidents.
5. Follow your own procedure exactly during any complaint, credentialing or performance process. Deviation is now evidence.
6. Build in a pause point. Know when a performance or investigation process should stop and a referral should be offered.
7. Review on triggers — after any incident, any change to how work is done, or whenever someone raises a concern.
Queensland specifics
Codes of practice are enforceable under Queensland WHS law, so the *Managing the risk of psychosocial hazards at work Code of Practice 2022* is not optional guidance. Queensland also requires every PCBU, since 1 March 2025, to hold a written prevention plan for sexual harassment and sex or gender-based harassment, reviewed at least every three years or sooner if a report is made. An existing anti-discrimination policy does not satisfy this — and a practice with a handful of staff is not exempt.
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The audit-trail test
Every case above turns on the same question. Not whether the practice cared about staff wellbeing, and not whether the culture was collegial. Whether it could *show* a documented process: hazards identified, risks assessed, controls chosen with a stated rationale, workers consulted, controls reviewed.
“We’re a good place to work” does not appear in a WHS audit trail. What appears there is what was written down.
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*This article is general information about work health and safety obligations. It is not legal advice, and it is not clinical advice. WHS requirements differ by jurisdiction and change frequently — confirm the current position with your regulator, your medical defence organisation, or an employment lawyer before acting.*
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Sources
– Safe Work Australia, *Key Work Health and Safety Statistics Australia 2025* — https://data.safeworkaustralia.gov.au/insights/key-whs-statistics-australia/latest-release
– Safe Work Australia, psychosocial hazards and the model Code of Practice — https://www.safeworkaustralia.gov.au/safety-topic/managing-health-and-safety/mental-health/psychosocial-hazards
– Comcare / Department of Defence prosecution — https://region.com.au/defence-handed-first-ever-commonwealth-employer-penalty-for-psychological-harm-death/931676/
– *Elisha v Vision Australia Ltd* [2024] HCA 50, High Court judgment summary — https://www.hcourt.gov.au/sites/default/files/assets/publications/judgment-summaries/2024/hca-50-2024-12-11.pdf
– *Kozarov v State of Victoria*, discussion of employer liability — https://www.lexisnexis.com/blogs/en-au/insights/psychosocial-hazards-looming-large-for-business
– Court Services Victoria penalty — https://cgw.com.au/publications/380000-fine-for-harmful-work-culture-serves-as-reminder-to-protect-employee-mental-wellbeing/
– *NSW Department of Education v SafeWork NSW (No 2)* [2026] NSWIRComm 1014 — https://mccullough.com.au/2026/04/07/psychosocial-risks-in-workplace-investigations/
– WorkSafe Queensland, Managing the risk of psychosocial hazards at work Code of Practice 2022 — https://www.worksafe.qld.gov.au/laws-and-compliance/codes-of-practice/managing-the-risk-of-psychosocial-hazards-at-work-code-of-practice-2022
– WorkSafe Queensland, sexual harassment prevention plans — https://www.worksafe.qld.gov.au/safety-and-prevention/mental-health/Psychosocial-hazards/sexual-harassment-and-sex-or-gender-based-harassment
– People at Work decommissioning — https://www.worksafe.qld.gov.au/safety-and-prevention/mental-health/people-at-work
– Drs4Drs, getting help — https://www.drs4drs.com.au/getting-help
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