Overtime payments to junior doctors in the midwest account for two-thirds of the total overtime payments of €15 million by the HSE in the midwest in 2011, writes GORDON DEEGAN
ONE JUNIOR doctor in the midwest last year received €88,409 in overtime payments, the Health Service Executive (HSE) confirmed yesterday.
According to records released through the Freedom of Information Act, junior doctors in the midwest in total received €10.1 million in overtime payments in 2011.
The overall payout represents a drop of 2.6 per cent on the €10.4 million paid out to junior doctors in overtime in Limerick, Clare and North Tipperary in 2010.
The overtime payments to junior doctors in the midwest accounts for 67 per cent of the total overtime payments of €15 million across the HSE in the midwest in 2011.
The HSE’s overtime bill last year was 11 per cent down on the €16.4 million paid out in 2010.
The figures for 2011 show that a Special Registrar at the Midwest Regional Hospital in Limerick received €88,340 in overtime payments in 2011.
A Registrar at Croom Hospital received €85,829.
Yesterday, the chairman of the Irish Medical Organisation’s (IMOs) Non-Consultant Hospital Doctor (NCHD) committee, Dr Mark Murphy, said that junior doctors would prefer not to have to work the long overtime hours.
“When junior doctors are ‘Skypeing’ their colleagues working overseas, they hear of the improved working conditions and lifestyles that their friends are enjoying,” he said.
“There isn’t the same struggle abroad in work/life balance for junior doctors.”
Dr Murphy said: “There is a culture of over-reliance on junior doctors in the Irish hospital system where you have not only junior doctors working the very long hours, but [they are] used to porter blood samples and radiology results in hospitals.”
Dr Murphy said that there was evidence that the manpower crisis which occurred with NCHDs last July would recur this summer.
“The HSE is not the employer of choice for Irish-based junior doctors or junior doctors overseas,” he said.
Dr Murphy said that this was due to the length of the training and the quality of training in Ireland for junior doctors.
“Other countries have addressed these problems, so there is no reason why they cannot be overcome here and there would be a greater desire by junior doctors to remain in Ireland if those issues were addressed,” Dr Murphy said.