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TEAMS FROM THE Irish Medical Organisation and the HSE will visit two hospitals today to examine rosters for junior doctors, as efforts continue to avert a one day strike next week.
As part of the dispute, doctors are demanding an end to shifts for NCHD’s running in excess of 24 hours. They are also calling on the HSE to bring in a plan aimed at achieving compliance with an EU directive on working hours.
Following talks at the Labour Relations Commission on Tuesday, it was agreed that officials from the IMO and the HSE would visit two hospitals today as part of a pilot plan for a ‘roster verification process’.
That process will involve examining rosters in the two facilities, assessing whether NHCD’s are currently scheduled for shifts of over 24 hours, and deciding what needs to be done to bring working hours into line.
It’s hoped that once a process can be agreed to bring rosters into line with the IMO’s demands, then that system can be rolled out to all hospitals.
“There are a number of hospitals the HSE say are compliant, and the HSE is acknowledging there are a number that aren’t complaint,” Director of Industrial Relations with the IMO Steve Tweed told TheJournal.ie.
“The verification process is to check all the rosters in every hospital.”
“If there are changes to be made to make them compliant, then the rosters need to be redesigned and reconfigured and a time frame needs to be put on that.”
Tweed said that the threat of strike action remained in place for next Wednesday, and that the union needed to see “significant progress” from the HSE before it altered from that position.
He said that the verification process was “what has to be done”. It’s planned the two sides will sit down again at the LRC tomorrow to review progress.
Two facilities of different sizes, and within quick travelling distance, were agreed upon as the sites for today’s visits during Tuesday’s talks.
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Why should doctors have to work 24 hour shifts and 100 hour weeks?
Fix this HSE.
To clarify, the upcoming strike is to get DOWN to 24 hours, as an immediate goal, to be swiftly followed by legal working hours.
Currently doctors can work shifts well in excess of 30 hours.
As a surgical trainee I believe EWTD is unrealistic for doctors and disastrous for surgical training. The Americans have found that reducing hours TO 80 doesn’t undermine training or patient safety, but that is a good bit more than the 48 hours EWTD limits us to. There are plenty of othere issues besides working hours that need addressing such as the excess of non-clinical/ tasks and paperwork doctors are made to do, bullying of NCHDs, and bloated administration.
Working in Ireland and US are not exactly comparable things. While americans may have ‘proven’ the safety of 80 hour working weeks, there is still a lot of data pointing to worse outcomes outside of normal working hours. The context also needs to looked at, in Ireland, the night time staffing is truly skeletal, while in the US, though it is reduced, the ratios are still dramatically different, with full lab support 24 hours a day etc. along with multiple attendings/consultants being on site throughout the night, even working a roster system 7 days a week.
Just shows 2 sides to each story, is it possible to cut down their admin tasks? Wouldn’t think it would be wise to have anyone but the Doctor writing up notes.
have your say