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JUNIOR MEDICAL WORKERS are being asked to work shifts of up to 36 hours in succession, TheJournal.ie can reveal.
An EU Directive, introduced in 2004, dictated that EU workers should work “no more than 48 hours per week” – however a source, who works as a junior doctor at a major Dublin hospital, claims this instruction is being ignored.
“I wouldn’t say there’s been a single week since I’ve started working about a year and a half ago that I’ve only had to work 48 hours a week,” he told TheJournal.ie. “It can be anything up to over 100 hours a week.
“Generally you wouldn’t get any sleep, or you might get one or two hours sleep. You could end up working anything up to 36 hours in a row.
“36 hours would be a record. But once a week you’d generally have to work 32 hours in a row.”
The junior doctor, who claims he has to work “about 70 hours a week on average,” said himself and his colleagues “haven’t made any major mistakes” as a result of tiredness, though they make “lots of minor mistakes” that could have an impact on patient care.
He feels junior medical workers are “being exploited” and described how he had concerns about his personal health and safety on account of these working hours.
“It’s a killer,” he explained. “Adrenaline tends to get you through the first 20 hours. You start to feel the burn at around 4am. You focus then on the ward for a few hours, you make your way through it, you’re generally okay that night, but then the next day is really exhausting.”
The source also revealed that while the workers are supposed to be getting overtime, this rule is also often disregarded.
“They say you’re supposed to get time and a half. But there’s all sorts of issues about NCHD overtime pay, and a lot of us aren’t getting our pay back. I didn’t get any overtime pay on my last paycheck.
“They ask us to fill in all these special sheets where you give reasons for all the extra hours we’re working, which shouldn’t really be feasible, because there’s never a single excuse for why you’re working an extra ten hours. There’s always a hundred reasons why you have to do that. It just doesn’t really work – they have to just believe that we’re working those hours and pay us the overtime.
“I think they’re just looking for any reason not to, so they’re putting loads of red tape in the way, so that they don’t pay us really so that the hospitals don’t run out of money.”
He claimed that these problems were not exclusive to his hospital, and were also endemic in “other major hospitals,” in which doctor friends of his have “echoed” these concerns.
“There’d be occasions where you don’t look particularly professional the next day on the ward,” he said. “You’d be just so exhausted and your eyes would be sort of closed and you’d just be nodding off. Things like that just don’t really look good.
“I don’t know if a lot of people turn a blind eye to it. I think it’s something that does really need to be addressed.”
As a potential solution to the problem, he claims a system akin to one that nurses work could be the way forward.
“They don’t have the resources to be getting different people in,” he explained. “What they should do is what they do in nursing, where they have some people working nights and not having to do the whole thing for a couple of months. Just do your week of nights, then just go back to your normal 9-5 job. It’s not usually 9-5 though. My normal job is probably around 8-7.”
The source also said that himself and his colleagues had received thinly-veiled threats about speaking out on the issue, and added that senior doctors indicated to them that working excessive hours is “a rite of passage”.
He revealed that there was widespread disharmony among junior doctors due to these conditions, and that roughly half his class have emigrated largely as a result.
In addition, he criticised the Irish Medical Organisation, suggesting they “don’t seem to be doing very much” about the issue.
The source also lambasted “the head of the IMO and his multi-million euro pension,” adding: “It’s kind of hard to trust an organisation when the CAO is walking away at about 53 with this payoff – that could certainly have paid us a lot of our overtime.”
He consequently claims he would be “tempted” by the prospect of emigration.
“The money we’re making at the moment is literally just enough to pay rent and pay back my loans from college, and just general living expenses. And when you’re working those hours, it’s pretty unsatisfying.”
Moreover, over the past year, two junior doctors have died as a result of suicide, and the source believes that working these excessive hours would have been a contributing factor to these deaths.
“The girl was a friend of one of the lads I’m working with. It does highlight the strain. Obviously, there’d also be a lot going on in someone’s personal life for that to happen, but it doesn’t help when they’re exhausted from their work.”
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Think you will find they are not. You think the public finances are bad now. They would be orders of magnitude worse off in the case of unity. Add that to the almost certainty of a civil war in the North. Thanks but no thanks.
@Dave Connolly: agreed, there would definitely be a civil war if that happens anytime soon. As much as it would be nice to have a united ireland, I’d much prefer to be separated if it ment innocent lives saved.
@Dave Connolly: David McWilliams says the exact opposite to you. He says that Ireland would thrive with unity. No disrespect to you Dave but I would take the word of a very accurate economist such as McWilliams over you any day of the week.
@Dave Connolly: “Economist and commentator David McWilliams has said Brexit has made a united Ireland far more likely, and that reunification represented a huge opportunity for the North with no downside.”
https://irishplan.net/reunification-now-more-likely-represents-a-huge-opportunity-mcwilliams/
@James Beattie: In fairness, McWilliams hasn’t been right about anything since 2008
@James Beattie: here’s another view from the experts. It appears as though opinion is heavily divided on the cost/benefit. One thing is for sure, the security budget would go through the roof. Employment would also be interesting with 1 in 3 people working in the UK public sector.
@James Beattie:
There would have to be a peaceful transition to unity to have any economic effect.
@Mickety Dee: Any examples to back up your comment? He was ignored by FF in 2008 and look what happened, the biggest crash in almost a century resulting in the taxpayers bailing out a banking system that was allowed run riot.
@Mickety Dee: I presume you are trying to wind a few up on here. McWilliams is one of the leading economists in not only ireland but Europe. He is bang on the money.
@Dave Connolly: as long as the people of the North continue to vote for the parties of conflict ( SF and the DUP) the North will always be a sectarian pit. Until the likes of the peace Wall (gas a Wall built to stop two communities from attacking each other called a peace wall) Any one who thinks a united ireland would work is mad
@James Beattie: we get it, you wear David McWilliams pyjamas to bed at night.
@John Moloney: better than wearing a Union Jack one like you kiddo
@Chris Mc: I always knew I was mad.
@James Beattie: why? have you a problem with people choosing to wear union jacks? its the small comments like this that show just how difficult any unification would be.
@alan: never said I have a problem with it. More reading and less commenting would suit you much better
FF & FG have had 100 years of power between them in Ireland, wouldn’t it be nice if they put that ‘experience’ to use by entering their own candidates into future elections in the six counties to make a difference or would they prefer to remain on the fence? Surely there are members & supporters of both parties who would prefer our island to be united rather than occupied. Just throwing it out there.
@GrumpyAulFella: Think it’s 1 in 2 up the north.
@Dave Connolly: it’s a century or two before the bigots on both sides are out of the picture, by that stage we’ll be abandoning low lying land cause of rising sea levels and taking in millions of migrants cause of unlivable areas of the planet, Irish unity won’t be a priority then survival will be.
@Pat Barry: that’s even more scary.
Good. Nor should they. We’ve enough problems with 26 counties never mind the sectarianism rife in the other 6.
Thousands of people aren’t waking up at all, thanks to the SF and Unionist murder gangs.
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