Junior doctors are worked like slaves

AFTER watching the recent programme about junior doctors on RTÉ, I was surprised how badly they are trained and treated in our hospitals.

We saw newly-qualified doctors working alone at night, without supervision, having already worked all day. This was like slave labour.

For an inexperienced doctor, this is intimidating and demoralising. Why was a doctor wandering around an x-ray department in the early hours?

Surely, there must be a better way of accessing x-rays than to waste the time, energy and expertise of a junior doctor who already seemed to have an endless list of jobs on hand.

We saw bright, cheerful, well-groomed individuals arriving for work. After 30 hours on duty, with little sleep, they looked haggard and certainly not fit for another day’s work.

The system seems inadequately supervised.

This cannot be good for doctor morale or for doctor/patient interaction.

Patrick K Fitzgerald

‘Shanid’

Model Farm Road

Cork