'Patient safety at risk due to the long hours doctors are working'

Irish Medical Council CEO Leo Kearns said the health service 'is in continued jeopardy' due to doctors working overlong hours. File picture: Maxwells

Patient safety is being put at risk by long hours worked by doctors, with data showing these medics are more likely to make mistakes, the CEO of the Irish Medical Council warned on Thursday.

Leo Kearns said 44.9% of doctors working 59 hours or more in a week were involved in what hospitals term “adverse events” leading to serious harm.

In contrast, just 9.5% of doctors who worked 39 hours a week or less were involved in similar incidents.

He listed the challenges facing doctors while stressing that ultimately these pose problems for patients.

“Without addressing these significant issues, our health service is in continued jeopardy,” he said.

Mr Kearns was speaking during the first day of the Irish Medical Organisation (IMO) annual general meeting in Killarney.

He said the growth in the number of consultants who are not specialists is also a concern for patients, and should be addressed.

Ireland has “about three times” the number of non-consultant hospital doctors who are not in training for a specialist post compared to health systems in the UK or Australia, he said.

The shortage of GPs is another area of concern for the public, he said, with some regions now finding it difficult to recruit.

Despite this, “about 28,000” doctors are expected to have registered with the council last year, up from over 21,000 the previous year, although “a significant number” work in private healthcare.

He called for the HSE and Department of Health to work together with colleges and unions, saying the crisis “has never really been taken seriously”.

HSE Medical Workforce Planning Lead for doctor training, Roisin Morris, highlighted psychiatry as an area needing extra doctors to treat the numbers of patients waiting.

They have been working with hospitals and sites to estimate what is needed over the next few years, Dr Morris said: 

The increased recommendation is to 850 psychiatrists from a benchmark of around 500, so it’s a big increase that we’ve identified. 

She echoed Mr Kearns’ concerns around the high number of doctors who emigrate due to being unhappy with the conditions here. The majority “by far” go to the UK, she said, followed by America and Canada but Australia is quite far down the overall numbers.

“That would infer to us that talk of Australia as a destination for our medical graduates is probably short-term, backpacker-type destination country,” she said.

IMO president John Cannon said doctors in training often work “80 to 90 hours a week” which led to a ballot for strike action last year.

While this was put on hold, the opening day of the agm heard examples of increasing pressures which Dr Cannon also linked to patient safety.

He expects patients to benefit from pledges to re-draw doctors’ rosters and other changes.

“The ballot still stands from last year, and we will have to see real and meaningful engagement from the Government,” he said.