Ireland’s largest teaching hospital has unveiled a groundbreaking charter for trainee doctors to improve their learning and working conditions.

The European Court of Justice has ruled that employees who do not have a fixed place of work and who travel each day between their home and customers’ premises are considered to be working while making those journeys under the European Working Time Directive.

Almost half of all junior doctors are “psychologically distressed”, says a study which indicates graduates are underprepared for their introduction to hospital workloads.

The long-term health of thousands of diabetes sufferers is being put at risk after a leading hospital pushed out their annual check-ups to 18 months due to pressures on the service.

Irish hospitals could be facing fines for breaching EU employment laws.

The shock departure of three registrars from Ennis Hospital has been described as a “crushing blow” for local acute services in the county.

Further strike action by junior doctors looks to have been averted after proposals were hammered out with the HSE.

If Martians landed here and went to hospital for emergency treatment they would know they were on a different planet in more ways than one.

Junior doctors have resumed plans for strike action likely to cause widespread disruption in public hospitals after the breakdown of talks with employers over excessive working hours.

Junior doctors are to go on strike next week.

The junior doctors strike threatening to derail the health service could be over before it has even begun after the HSE referred the matter to the Labour Relations Commission.

Strike-threatening doctors have moved to ease fears over patient safety and offered to staff hospitals during a planned walk-out with bank holiday or weekend level rosters.

A leading patients’ group has said it will support junior doctors in whatever strike action they take — provided the public does not become “a pawn in this looming avoidable crisis”.

Junior doctors have warned the HSE they will be forced to take strike action from as soon as Sept 17 unless drastic steps are made to reduce their excessive working hours.

The trade union representing Ireland's junior doctors said it was disappointed with the outcome of a meeting with the HSE to discuss working hours.

A doctors’ union says the HSE only has itself to blame for its €105m deficit because it failed to implement already agreed cost- saving measures potentially worth hundreds of millions of euro.

A potential junior doctors’ strike that could cripple the hospital system is looming as a direct result of the excessive and “dangerous” length of shifts the medics are forced to work.

Non-consultant hospital doctors have begun a national campaign that could include taking industrial action to force a reduction in their “dangerously long” working hours.

Hospital doctors are considering industrial action over the HSE’s failure to introduce a maximum limit of 24 hours for on-call periods.

One junior doctor in the HSE last year received more than €150,000 in overtime payments.

A new policing shift system which promises to have more gardaí on at busier times is set to start in four weeks’ time.

VERY considerable progress has been made in the last three years in controlling overtime costs for hospital registrars and in the wider health services but still more needs to be done.

OVERTIME paid to HSE registrars is still costing over €100 million a year, while 15 hospital doctors around the country earned more than €100,000 in overtime alone last year.

RANK and file gardaí have voted to accept the terms of the Croke Park public sector deal, it emerged last night.

The Health Service Executive has announced it is cutting allowances and other payments to almost 5,000 junior doctors.

IN A sign of their growing impatience, the Irish Nurses Organisation has threatened industrial action over the non-implementation of new rosters for a shorter working week.

NURSES at Cavan General Hospital are staging a lunchtime protest today to express their anger at the failure by management to implement the shorter working week.

Last minute negotiations were being held tonight between European Government ministers and officials in a bid to head off a row over new employment rights for temporary and agency workers.

UP to 17% of tasks carried out by junior doctors involve “finding stuff and paperwork” and 15% are either non-medical or could be done by a less-skilled hospital worker, a survey has found.

PREGNANT obstetrics trainees are working straight 12-hour shifts into the final weeks of their pregnancy while advising their patients to stay home and rest.

CLAIMS by medical students that hospital consultants failed to show for 30% of their teaching sessions last year are to be investigated by an Oireachtas committee.

The European Working Time Directive has come into force today for junior doctors, which means their maximum working week is now set at 58 hours.

A hard-hitting study offering an alternative to the Government’s Hanly report is to be launched by a health services action group today.

TAOISEACH Bertie Ahern’s claim that difficulties in cutting junior hospital doctors’ working hours are being experienced “all over Europe” has been dismissed by an EU employment expert.

A FURIOUS row has broken out between the Government and critics of its plans to centralise acute hospital care with both sides accusing the other of lying.

PATIENTS will suffer and waiting lists will increase once junior doctors’ working hours are reduced, a leading surgeon has warned.

HEALTH employers face hefty fines if they fail to scale back junior doctors’ working hours in compliance with the European Working Time Directive (EWTD).

PLANS to reduce junior doctor working hours and change the way consultants serve public hospitals have hit a major hurdle — just days after a blueprint for health service reform was published.