Townsville Hospital worker claims she was bullied

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Townsville Bulletin

November 22, 2016 1:00am

A TOWNSVILLE Hospital employee says she tried to commit suicide twice following ongoing workplace bullying and harassment.

Jodi Miller (pictured) said she wanted to share her story so to give others strength to come forward with their experiences. It comes after the Bulletin revealed numerous employees across the Townsville Hospital and Kirwan Health Campus had lodged bullying complaints. Since then, 15 employees have contacted the Bulletin to discuss their experiences.

Ms Miller has been seeing a psychologist for anxiety that she said was caused from chronic fatigue and workplace issues.

She said while she had been a victim of verbal abuse, failure to address workload issues and roster adjustments were what “tipped her over”. “I asked for my rosters to be adjusted between July and August 2015,” she said. “I was also working every weekend, there was no balance between work and my family life.”

Ms Miller said there was never enough people on during her night shift, leaving her feeling exhausted. Ms Miller said when her roster was adjusted, it wasn’t what she had requested.
“I took three months off with chronic fatigue and then returned to work again on July 13,” she said.

Ms Miller said she hadn’t been back an hour before she was requested to help with a patient who became aggressive and bit her on the arm.
“I finished the job and burst into tears,” she said.
“I went straight to the doctors and was told I had high blood pressure, which I have never had.”

Ms Miller said she applied for a work cover claim however it was denied. She said following an independent psychiatric investigation, it was determined that the bite on her forearm was not the main cause for her poor mental health and was told she couldn’t go back to work for three months.

“My issue is now sitting with Australian Workers’ Union lawyers to see if I can overturn the decision,” she said.

Ms Miller said she wanted to bring awareness to workplace bullying.
“I tried taking my own life twice, it tipped me over,” she said.

Townsville Hospital and Health Service chief operating officer Kieran Keyes said the matters raised by Ms Miller had been investigated and welcomed the opportunity to discuss them with her. “The health service has not received any grievances relating to workplace harassment or bullying from Ms Miller,” he said.

“A number of the matters raised by Ms Miller are protected by employee privacy and we remain committed to protecting the privacy of our staff.
“We work with staff to ensure rosters are assigned to ensure a balance between work and family commitments as well as the organisation’s operational requirements.”
Mr Keyes said there were nine patient handlers rostered on night shifts.

 
Source: http://www.townsvillebulletin.com.au/news/townsville-hospital-worker-claims-she-was-bullied/news-story/3f28856e65cf157743bd216df189a01e

VIDEO STORY : Bullied workers shattered; Workplace bullying costs Australian businesses an estimated $36 billion a year

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Bullying in the workplace is something that's rarely discussed, but it should be, as those whose lives it affects can be shattered forever.

Workplace bullying costs Australian businesses an estimated $36 billion a year.
In Victoria, the recently passed Brodie's Law has made bullying at work a criminal offence, but in every other state it's still not against the law.

Karen Carr lives a hair’s breadth from becoming yet another bullying statistic. She barely hangs on each day, having suffered months of ridicule, abuse and sabotage in a job she loved.
“It has reduced me to a shadow of my former self," Carr said.

WATCH STORY here - Video Link 

One in five Australian workers is bullied at work, with almost half of all victims simply leaving their jobs. It’s an epidemic that’s getting worse, and no company or industry is immune.
"This is an insidious disease that's of epidemic proportions," Carr said.
“Bullying is premeditated. It is intentional, repeated assault."

Carr still thinks of suicide daily. She is unable to return to work of any kind, and a successful career in newspapers has been destroyed by a pack of frenzied workmates. Despite this, she is the one punished, and the bullies have not even been reprimanded. “I am viewed as the criminal in this, and I am made to feel like that. Whereas the bullies are all living life just as they were seven years ago."

Nine years of constant harassment and bullying has left gentle giant Rob a quivering wreck, after he suffered a complete mental breakdown from taunts and abuse. Now his wife Tina is terrified to leave him alone, even for a minute. "It came to the point where Tina had to full-on wrestle me to the ground to get a knife off of me, because I was going to slit my throat," said Rob.
Workplace bullying, says Rob, destroyed his life.

“It was a day-to-day fight just to keep him from hurting himself, from killing himself, just to keep him alive,” Tina said. Rob now survives on a small pharmacy of pills and potions to get through every day. “People don't realise how serious bullying can be, and what it can do. People just think it's names in a schoolyard, but it is so much more than that," he explained.

Telstra linesman Levin Madeley is another bullying victim hounded out of his work by unrealistic pressures, crazy deadlines and workplace bullying. “I ended up having to go to the doctor before I did something really stupid," Madeley said. His wife Jenny knew something was wrong, but has no idea just how wrong or serious it was. “You think you know somebody really well, and Levin is my soul mate, so to not know that he was that close (to suicide), it hurts a lot," Jenny said.

Sadly some do take that terrible, final step. Nineteen-year-old Brodie Panlock jumped from a multi-story car park after enduring more than a year of workmates treating her like dirt at a Melbourne cafe. She was spat on, called fat and ugly, and once had fish sauce poured all over her. Under the tougher laws in Victoria, three so-called ‘workmates’ and the cafe owner were fined more than $300,000 after the all pleaded guilty.

Victoria is the only state to make bullying a crime, but is that enough?

Doctor Carlo Caponechia is doing a nation-wide study of workplace bullying and its terrible costs. He has been shocked by what he's uncovered. “One of the negatives is that it's not preventative. It takes for something bad to happen, like suicide or death or someone feeling very threatened and humiliated, and really negatively affected by this," Dr Caponechia said. “People are being hurt and they shouldn't be hurt in the course of their work."

But how do you fix a problem where the bulk of victims are too frightened to come forward?
According to Dr Caponechia “You have to make it safe for people to report, and you have to make sure people know how to report."

Carr is still waiting for her case to reach court. She’s hanging on, day by day, and praying for justice, but unable to banish her demons. “I will never forget. How can you forget an event that basically takes your life away as you knew it?"

Contact details

• Workplace bullying information - www.reachout.com

Readers seeking support and information about suicide prevention can contact Lifeline on 13 11 14 or SANE Helpline on 1800 18 SANE (7263)

Health Impact and Side Effects of Bullying ... Blaming others can ruin your health

STORY HIGHLIGHTS

• Authors calling for new diagnosis called PTED, or post-traumatic embitterment disorder
• Expert suggests griping for a while to vent, get it out of your system
• Then keep reminding yourself of the all the physical harm you're doing to yourself

Kevin Benton had every reason to feel bitter.

During his sophomore year in college, he says, white students harassed him and the only other African-American living on the floor in his dorm in order to get them to move out.

The white students spat on their doors, tore their posters off the wall, and banged on their door at four in the morning. When Benton brought up the problems at a dorm meeting, the other students snickered.

"I felt like I was being bullied, being targeted," he says now of his college experience 19 years ago. "I knew I couldn't retaliate in any way or I'd lose my basketball scholarship."

This was the first time in his life Benton had encountered racism and it hit him hard. He had trouble sleeping, and then over the next several months he suffered panic attacks. Admitted to the hospital, he was found to have hypertrophic cardiomyopathy, or thickening of the muscles in the heart. The disease is the leading cause of heart-related sudden death in people under 30.

So sick he couldn't walk, Benton lay in his hospital bed bitter and resentful. "I thought to myself, 'I've never hurt anybody. I serve in the community. I work with youth. I wrestled with God -- why did this happen to me?'" he remembers. Just then, a janitor walked by and grabbed Benton's hand, and prayed aloud to God to heal him. "As soon as she said, 'Amen,' I felt like someone had poured cold water on my head and made my heart shrink," he says.

The first time Kevin Benton encountered racism, he was in college and took it really hard.

Benton forgave the students who had tormented them, and three days later, he walked out of the hospital. "If I hadn't forgiven them, I'd be dead," says Benton, now healthy and a social worker for the Philadelphia Department of Human Services.

Feeling persistently resentful toward other people -- the boss who fired you, the spouse who cheated on you -- can indeed affect your physical health, according to a new book, "Embitterment: Societal, psychological, and clinical perspectives."

In fact, the negative power of feeling bitter is so strong that the authors call for the creation of a new diagnosis called PTED, or post-traumatic embitterment disorder, to describe people who can't forgive others' transgressions against them.

"Bitterness is a nasty solvent that erodes every good thing," says Dr. Charles Raison, associate professor of psychiatry at Emory University School of Medicine and CNNHealth's Mental Health expert doctor.

What bitterness does to your body

Feeling bitter interferes with the body's hormonal and immune systems, according to Carsten Wrosch, an associate professor of psychology at Concordia University in Montreal and an author of a chapter in the new book. Studies have shown that bitter, angry people have higher blood pressure and heart rate and are more likely to die of heart disease and other illnesses.

The data that negative mental states cause heart problems is just stupendous. The data is just as established as smoking, and the size of the effect is the same." --Dr. Charles Raison

Physiologically, when we feel negatively towards someone, our bodies instinctively prepare to fight that person, which leads to changes such as an increase in blood pressure. "We run hot as our inflammatory system responds to dangers and threats," says Raison, clinical director of the Mind-Body Program at Emory.

Feeling this way in the short term might not be dangerous -- it might even be helpful to fight off an enemy -- but the problem with bitterness is that it goes on and on. When our bodies are constantly primed to fight someone, the increase in blood pressure and in chemicals such as C-reactive protein eventually take atoll on the heart and other parts of the body.

"The data that negative mental states cause heart problems is just stupendous," Raison says. "The data is just as established as smoking, and the size of the effect is the same."

How to get rid of bitterness

It's impossible to avoid all events that could turn you bitter. At some point, all of us will be the victim of a crazy boss, a cheating spouse, a spiteful co-worker, or someone else who does us wrong. Some will be even more unlucky, and suffer physical or sexual abuse.

"There are situations where you'd have to be the Dalai Lama not to feel bitterness," says Raison, who writes regularly for CNN.com on the mind-body connection for health.

The key is how we react to these situations in the long term. Here are five tips for how to let go of bitterness as quickly as possible for the sake of your own health;

1. Gripe for a while

"Give yourself time to vent and get it out of your system," suggests Dr. Maryann Troiani, co-author of the book Spontaneous Optimism.

2. Watch the news

Frederic Luskin, director of the Stanford Forgiveness Project, tells his embittered patients to think about how many others have had bad things happen to them.

"I ask people to watch the news for a day, or read the paper, or go to work and talk to people, and they'll see that others have suffered and this is just a part of life," says Luskin, author of the book "Forgive for Good."

3. Consider confronting the person who's hurt you

Troiani says some of her patients have found solace in doing this. Other times, however, it can backfire. "Some ex-spouses are real psychopaths, and hunting them down can be disastrous," she says. "They'll just connive and twist things around and blame you." If that's your situation, try writing a letter to the person and reading it to a trusted friend, she suggests.

4. Realize you're only harming yourself

Keep reminding yourself of the all the physical harm you're doing yourself by remaining bitter. "I tell my patients, take care of this bitterness now, or in five years it will haunt you in the form of chronic headaches, fatigue, arthritis, and backaches," Troiani says.

5. Consider the other person's mental state

Author Maya Angelou has every reason to feel bitter. Raped as a child, then overwhelmed with guilt when her rapist, an uncle, was murdered by another family member, she was mute for several years. Still, she says she never felt bitterness toward her attacker. "Although he was a child molester and abused me, I never hated him, and I'm glad of that," she says. "What I realized is that people do what they know to do -- not what you think they should know." As an adult, she's continued that mind-set. "If someone hurts my feelings or hurts me in any way, I think, 'This dummy, that's all he knew,' and I'm not going to carry this bitterness around with me. I will not give it a perch. I will not give it a place to live in me because I know that's dangerous."

Don't be a doormat

Taking these steps and losing your bitterness does not mean you should be a doormat, Raison says. For example, consider the classic case of the wife whose husband leaves her for a much younger woman. Instead of feeling angry, she can think about moving on with her life and finding someone new. "What happens is that the husband who's been doing the 20-year-old comes crawling back because now his wife looks really good, and the wife can say, 'You're a day late and a dollar short,'" he says.

HEALTH - Psychological Stress in the Healthy Human Brain

In 2005 - For the first time ever scientists visualized the effects of everyday psychological stress in the healthy human brain.

Researchers at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine used fMRI - functional magnetic resonance imaging - to image brain activity in their subjects. The researchers induced stress on healthy subjects by asking them to quickly perform challenging mental tasks while being monitored for performance.

During the tasks, the subjects' emotional responses - such as stress, anxiety, and frustration, were measured - as well as changes in stress hormones and heart rate. Many subjects described themselves as being "flustered, distracted, rushed and upset" during the task.

During the "stress test," results showed increased blood-flow to the right prefrontal cortex of the brain - an area long associated with anxiety and depression. The increased blood-flow continued even after the task was complete.

These results suggest a strong link between psychological stress and negative emotions.

Or, since the prefrontal cortex is also associated with the ability to perform executive functions, such as working memory and goal oriented behavior, this result could be highlighting that action.

"How the brain reacts under psychological stress is an untouched subject for cognitive neuroscientists, but it is certainly a critical piece of the puzzle in understanding the health effects of stress," said study leader Jiongjiong Wang. "Our findings should help significantly advance our understanding of this process."

This research - Perfusion functional MRI reveals cerebral blood flow pattern under psychological stress - is detailed in the Nov. 21 2005 online edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

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