Doctors consider industrial action over 80-hour weeks

Junior doctors often work 80 hours weekly including shifts of up to 30 hours.

Hospital doctors in training are considering industrial action for the second time in less than a decade as “dangerous” work practices continue, the Irish Medical Organisation (IMO) said.

Junior doctors often work 80 hours weekly including shifts of up to 30 hours, said Dr John Cannon, committee chair for the union’s non-consultant hospital doctors.

“You feel punch-drunk. I would feel unsafe to drive a car but somehow you are being asked to go and perform complex medical procedures and make complex decisions,” he said.

Your decision-making capacity significantly reduces. Jobs that take you five minutes during the day could take 45 minutes at night because it is impossible to think straight. It is very dangerous.

Describing doctors napping on chairs between seeing patients, he said: “I don’t think anyone in the country would want their loved one to go into the hospital and be treated by a doctor on hour 28 of a 36-hour shift.” 

Under the European Working Time Directive, employees should not work over 48 hours in a week and they are entitled to an 11 hour break every 24 hours.

“We have little faith in the HSE when it comes to remedying these issues," Dr Cannon said.

He said the HSE reports 80% compliance with the directive but that the IMO's internal numbers are closer to 30% compliance.

Staff report they are not always paid for longer hours with salary slips reflecting hours allowed rather than worked.

“Unless there is major engagement in terms of how doctors are rostered, and how our hours are recorded and paid, we may be heading towards industrial action,” he said, with many of the 7,500 junior doctors set to join a virtual meeting on Monday.  

We are going to put it to the assembly and see if we can find a consensus for further action. That may include a ballot for industrial action.

He also criticised the rotas which see trainees move hospitals every six months.

“It’s an anachronistic system from the 1940s, based around a 22-year-old young male doctor who is fancy-free and can travel at a whim,” he said. 

“It’s very heavily male-biased. This is a terrible system for young professional women to try and work in.” 

Dr Cannon is now training as a GP. 

“I’ve just left the hospitals. I’m 35 and I want to have a family and be able to spend time with my wife and have children,” he said.

Emigration drive

Research by Dr Niamh Humphries, Royal College of Surgeons Ireland Graduate School of Healthcare Management, indicates these conditions are driving doctor emigration.

“It is flat-out, very intense the whole time they are at work, and there is no set clocking-in at 9 o’clock and out at 9 o’clock. They just keep going until all of the work is done,” she said.

She said many hospitals still use fax machines and carbon paper to record data or communicate, leaving younger doctors needing to be trained in how to use these, adding to inefficiencies.

“It’s all quite an under-resourced system. And all the systems are different in each hospital as well, it’s challenging to get to know the systems and they move every six months or 12 months,” she said.