Four weeks in NSW, VIC and QLD 123; two weeks in SA and the ACT 57; 14 days in the NT 8; four to twelve in TAS 6; and in WA it scales with contract length, four weeks up to 12 months 4. The Fair Work Act does not set employee notice — your award or agreement does 9.
Find your instrument, not a website. Employee notice is set by the award or enterprise agreement covering you, and it differs by state.
NSW — Public Hospital Medical Officers (State) Award, cl 22: "Employment may be terminated only by four weeks' notice given in writing either by the employer or the officer… or by payment or forfeiture of four weeks' salary" 1.
VIC — Doctors in Training (VPHS) Agreement 2022-2026, cl 29.1(a): four weeks, or four weeks' wages paid or forfeited 2.
QLD — Medical Officers (Queensland Health) Award – State 2015, cl 9.2: four weeks for a resident medical officer, which the award defines to include registrars and senior registrars; three months for SMOs under cl 9.3 3.
WA — AMA Industrial Agreement 2024, cl 9(4)(a): four weeks for contracts of 12 months or less, six weeks up to two years, eight weeks up to three, twelve beyond 4.
SA — Salaried Medical Officers EA 2025, cl 23.2.1: two weeks for everyone other than consultants, who give six 5.
TAS — Medical Practitioners (Tasmanian State Service) Award, cl 9(b)(i): "no less than four weeks and up to twelve weeks" 6.
ACT — Medical Practitioners Determination 2023-2026, cl 26.1: two weeks, in writing 7. NT — Medical Officers NTPS EA, cl 13: 14 days 8.
The Fair Work Act is not your answer. Section 117 binds the employer; section 118 merely allows awards to set employee notice 9. And public hospital doctors in NSW, QLD, SA, WA and TAS sit in state industrial systems where the NES does not apply at all 10.
If you give short notice. NSW, VIC, QLD, WA and TAS all let the employer forfeit or pay out against the unserved notice 12346; SA, ACT and NT have no forfeiture clause 578. Fair Work's published position is that a deduction comes out of wages owed, not out of accrued leave 10.
Every one of these lets you agree to less123478. In practice that is the whole game: ask the new job to delay your start, ask the old one to release you early, and put it in writing 11. None of this is legal advice — if there is money or a dispute in it, ring your union or your MDO before you send the email.
Caveat. NSW Health publishes the award itself as the citable source; policy directive PD2019_027 (Employment Arrangements for Medical Officers) governs contract length but contains no notice-of-resignation provision, so it is not cited here. The NT figure comes from the 2022-2025 agreement, which restates section 6 of the PSEM Regulations; a 2026-2029 agreement was balloted from February 2026 and could not be confirmed as approved, so re-check NT before relying on it. The SA clause was read by OCR from a scanned PDF. The Tasmanian award states a 4-12 week range without saying who chooses within it — your contract will. Instruments are varied and replaced constantly: read the clause in your own instrument for the current year. This describes what the instruments say; it is not legal advice, and for anything contested get it from your union or your MDO.
r/ausjdocs — community view, not policy; verbatim, cautionary beside positive where both exist, every quote linked to the comment.
4 weeks notice is pretty standard. I'd ask your new job for a delayed start due to your contract with your current hospital, which they should accept.
Read your existing contract.
The award states "reasonable notice" must be given.
Usually it's 4 weeks. However, I have seen doctors walking away from their jobs the day after they secured an advanced training position elsewhere, possibly with minimal repercussions. Everyone is too busy to actually "punish" them.
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But to actually answer your question in NSW it was four weeks I had to serve as a notice period when I quit.
Asked 88 times on r/ausjdocs (title-regex count) · encoded by hand from the numbered sources, retrieved 12 Sept 2026; no AI wrote any of it. how the count was madeasked_count = posts in r_ausjdocs_posts.jsonl (19,145 posts, 2022-09-13 to 2026-09-12) whose title matches /(notice period|resign|resignation|giving notice|quit(ting)? (my|the) job)/i — a broad topic count that also catches the NSW psychiatrist mass-resignation news cycle, not only questions about personal notice. Quotes are the highest-scoring comments in the threads where someone actually asks how much notice they owe, with the 'people walk out and nothing happens' view kept beside the award figure. Awards, enterprise agreements, determinations, the Fair Work Act and Fair Work Ombudsman guidance are all recorded under source kind 'award' as the schema's instrument bucket.