Junior doctors warn they will up the stakes and strike for two days as the war of words between the HSE and the Irish Medical Organisation over working hours continues.

Junior doctors have claimed strong public support for their strike over working hours.

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.

The Irish Medical Organisation says a strike by junior doctors can be avoided if the HSE is willing to negotiate over working hours.

A doctors’ trade union is to meet the Health Service Executive (HSE) next week to plan for emergency cover in the event of work stoppages in protest over junior doctors’ 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.

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

Junior doctors who have threatened to ballot for industrial action at a Cork hospital say they are owed unrostered overtime payments stretching back six months.

The treatment of young doctors by the HSE is causing an escalating crisis, writes Colm Burke

The issue of overworked junior doctors is again coming under the spotlight, as the latest batch of NCHD's complete their first fortnight in their new jobs.

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

Hospitals are paying agencies €100 an hour for locums to plug the gaps in emergency departments (EDs) when the shortfall could be substantially addressed by creating a new grade of staff doctor.

A LEADING medic has warned that Department of Health plans to tackle junior doctors’ excessive hours may never be implemented due to staff cuts and a 15-year failure to address the issue.

A PSYCHIATRIC hospital serving a major city is unfit for purpose and should be closed down, experts have warned.

THE Medical Council has drawn up a protocol designed to avoid the kind of administrative mess that has left about 85 junior doctors jobless more than two months after travelling here from India and Pakistan.

JUNIOR doctors have called for a nationwide survey of staff hospital overnight rooms after claims some units are unclean, a security risk and suffering from “vermin infestation”.

JUST a quarter of interns at two Dublin-based teaching hospitals said they routinely wear gloves when taking blood, a study has found.

The Irish Medical Organisation and several junior doctors have been granted High Court permission to challenge what they claim is a breach of contract by the Health Service Executive over an attempt to introduce a number of cost saving measures including the reduction of overtime rates.

AFTER successfully disrupting Government agencies and departments yesterday, lower paid civil servants are to begin a campaign of locally based work protests on March 9.

AS a consultant psychiatrist in the HSE, I wish to express my dismay at the severely unjust financial treatment proposed in relation to my non-consultant hospital doctor (NCHD) colleagues.

PROFESSOR RAY KINSELLA hits the bulls eye in his brilliant explanation of the overarching currents undermining and destroying the provision of medical services in Ireland (November 7).

JUNIOR doctors are seeking an overall pay increase of 20%, claiming their earnings will drop by up to one-third when European Union legislation banning their long working hours is fully introduced and their traditional overtime earnings cut.

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.

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.

ANGER spilled over in Wexford and Galway yesterday over bureaucratic decisions that have put the operation of a hospital’s casualty service in doubt and restricted the care choices available to pregnant women.

REDUCING junior hospital doctors’ working hours without appointing additional consultants could force the closure of smaller hospitals.

Junior doctors across the country begin balloting today on a proposal to extend industrial action in a dispute over rostering changes.

HOSPITAL services nationwide face a threat of industrial action and disruption because of a dispute involving the country’s 3,500 junior or non-consultant hospital doctors.

DOCTORS last night warned that patients on waiting lists will have their operations deferred if a series of one-day strikes are rolled out nationally next month.

JUNIOR doctors at one of the south east's busiest hospitals will begin a work-to-rule from tomorrow evening.

JUNIOR doctors are threatening to go on strike in protest at being included on senior staff work rosters.