Sir, - I am a paediatric senior house officer working in Waterford Regional Hospital. There are only three of us providing SHO cover for the paediatric unit; this requires us to work between 70 and 100 hours per week. One of my colleagues is away on holidays at the moment and despite the efforts of the personnel department no locum cover has been found. In an eight-day period I will have to work 138 hours!
My situation exemplifies the entire Junior doctor crisis. Firstly, "overtime" is not optional but mandatory. Management, secure in the knowledge that no doctor will leave a patient in need of attention, have chosen to exploit us rather than acknowledge our commitment. We actually get paid less after 39 hours per week, so there is a financial incentive to keep us working. Furthermore, this incentive increases the longer we work. This is the key issue for junior doctors.
We have seen how committed the government is to reducing our hours, having supported a 13-year lead-in to the introduction of a 48-hour week. If any further proof were needed, the Department of Health agreed in 1986 to limit Junior Doctors hours at 65 per week. Fourteen years later I will work 120 hours in a week, almost double that limit. Until such time as there is a financial disincentive to keep us working after 39 hours we will see no reduction in junior doctors' hours.
This is not about money for junior doctors but trying to create the only framework within which we will see a reduction in our hours.
Lastly, the reason the personnel department couldn't get a locum to cover me is because there are none. They have either left the country or left the profession. There are already many permanent posts in hospitals which can't be filled but come July 1st, when junior doctors move jobs, there will be a crisis in our health system. The HSEA and the Department of Health have treated junior doctors with contempt for years and will reap what they have sown, a bitter harvest. - Yours, etc.,
Dr Niall MacNamara, Paediatric Department, Waterford Regional Hospital, Waterford.