Moving away to get well paid, scheduled correctly, asked to work reasonable hours and protected from patient abuse. Why that is shocking stuff.
65 to 72 hours wasn’t unusual for me, including 2x 24 hour shifts a week at one point
After my intern year 87% left. About 30% of those that go never return. Theres a lot of Irish names in all sorts of jobs in the New Zealand hospital i work in
when the indo does its next annual report on the dozen junior doctors who clear 6 figures, remember they’re on hourly rates.
Also, this is interesting:
>The study also found that 27.8% of Ireland’s 20,962 clinically active doctors working in the Republic have an international qualification (meaning that they trained outside of Ireland, the EU, and the UK). Most of the internationally trained doctors got their qualifications in Pakistan (39.7%) followed by Sudan (21.3%).”
HSE should be totally abolished, entirely new management is required. It’s been broken forever.
If they looked at hospital doctors only, I’d reckon this figure would be closer to 90% working more than 48 hours.
I used to work with a qualified MD. He was a self taught software developer
1 in 4? I thought it was higher, big reason i took medicine off my cao last june
Does the issue also affect consultant positions? Maybe it’s a silly question, but I haven’t had any experience with the Irish healthcare system – I’m just curious.
This is a disgrace. The HSE needs to be completely rebuilt from the ground up and the current management removed. What a waste of tax payers money at every level. All that educational investment just given away, shameful. Not to mention the risk this puts patients under.
And my GP office seems to only be open 6 hours a day
The Doctors should have to work in Irish health care for 7 to 10 years after we pay to train them. Obviously with dignified working conditions. Nurses same. They cost the taxpayers a fortune to train, working conditions and aggressive behaviour from patients should be figured out
I’m surprised it’s only 25%. I’ve always worked more than a 48 hr week. Add 20 hours onto that.
I suspect if there was actual clocking in/out this figure would be much higher.
As was experienced by Beaumont hospital when they introduced a clock in system only to discover doctors had been seriously underclaiming their hours. They were trying to get rid of it by the time I was leaving, but that was resisted. Not sure in the few years since whether they’ve succeeded in ditching it.
This healthcare system underestimates the value of predictable work schedules in retaining doctors. If you know your hours and holidays for the next 6 months the difficult weeks are 1000 times easier when you can prepare for them and see the light at the end of the tunnel.
Every hospital hr department should have a government mandated position, someone dedicated to ensuring the rostering complexities are met smoothly without docs having uncertainty, having to text around and hope one of their overworked colleagues can pick up an extra shift so they can make a family funeral.
A dedicated point of contact so that incoming doctors can schedule their holidays before arriving to a new post for a 3 or 6 or 12 month rotation. Someone who can liaise with a Locum agency and has a ring fenced budget for cover for sick leave etc.
In NZ you know your roster months in advance and cannot be made to work a single extra day. And if you choose to you get Locum rates
Has there been any published research on the correlation between the duration of a doctors shift and the negative impact on care?
I’m no doctor but these hours can’t be good for anyone, not least the patients.
The health system has an intractable problem in that doctors are the most important part of it but generally aren’t as influential as the larger number of unionised workers who are nurses, civil servants, etc. Add to that the division between consultants and training doctors in hospitals and it becomes disastrous.
As a hospital doctor, I’ve never worked less than 48 hours in a week
[removed]
Why can’t we just hire more and pay them better
I don’t understand this
I would have thought 1 in 4 workers in general do more than 48 hours a week, or maybe I’m just a chump!
I think it was evident during Covid the social respect we had for healthcare providers. Including paramedics nurses and firefighters etc. then the same people we clapped out the window as a mark of respect, we turned on them and abused them in the comments when the same people looked for pay rises over the last year.
Why do they go and work abroad. It’ll get worse.
Completely ridiculous. Firstly, working those hours will inevitably result in fatigue, which will lead to mistakes. That’s potentially a matter of life and death.
Secondly, it makes it effectively impossible to be a parent. I did some work at a house in Howth last year where both parents were surgeons. They had a full time nanny for their three kids. The parents left and 6am and returned at about 8pm pretty much every day. They hardly saw their kids, except at weekends and during holidays. The couple were probably earning over €500k combined a year, but their quality of life was brutal. I wouldn’t do that job myself, I want to be in my kids’ life.
The problem is that the medical profession never modernised. Other jobs have reasonable working hours and a work life balance. For some reason we decided that the medical profession should be different
24 comments
Moving away to get well paid, scheduled correctly, asked to work reasonable hours and protected from patient abuse. Why that is shocking stuff.
65 to 72 hours wasn’t unusual for me, including 2x 24 hour shifts a week at one point
After my intern year 87% left. About 30% of those that go never return. Theres a lot of Irish names in all sorts of jobs in the New Zealand hospital i work in
when the indo does its next annual report on the dozen junior doctors who clear 6 figures, remember they’re on hourly rates.
Also, this is interesting:
>The study also found that 27.8% of Ireland’s 20,962 clinically active doctors working in the Republic have an international qualification (meaning that they trained outside of Ireland, the EU, and the UK). Most of the internationally trained doctors got their qualifications in Pakistan (39.7%) followed by Sudan (21.3%).”
This means there are about 2,313 Pakistan and 1,241 Sudan trained doctors working in Ireland. Since, there were [15,185 people with Pakistani citizenship](https://www.cso.ie/en/releasesandpublications/ep/p-cpsr/censusofpopulation2022-summaryresults/migrationanddiversity/) in the 2022 census, this suggests about 10-15% of Pakistani adults in Ireland are medical doctors compared to 0.5% of adults in the general population ([40% of medical graduates in Pakistan](https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10025733/) leave to work in other countries, which undermines Pakistan’s medical system).
HSE should be totally abolished, entirely new management is required. It’s been broken forever.
If they looked at hospital doctors only, I’d reckon this figure would be closer to 90% working more than 48 hours.
I used to work with a qualified MD. He was a self taught software developer
1 in 4? I thought it was higher, big reason i took medicine off my cao last june
Does the issue also affect consultant positions? Maybe it’s a silly question, but I haven’t had any experience with the Irish healthcare system – I’m just curious.
This is a disgrace. The HSE needs to be completely rebuilt from the ground up and the current management removed. What a waste of tax payers money at every level. All that educational investment just given away, shameful. Not to mention the risk this puts patients under.
And my GP office seems to only be open 6 hours a day
The Doctors should have to work in Irish health care for 7 to 10 years after we pay to train them. Obviously with dignified working conditions. Nurses same. They cost the taxpayers a fortune to train, working conditions and aggressive behaviour from patients should be figured out
I’m surprised it’s only 25%. I’ve always worked more than a 48 hr week. Add 20 hours onto that.
I suspect if there was actual clocking in/out this figure would be much higher.
As was experienced by Beaumont hospital when they introduced a clock in system only to discover doctors had been seriously underclaiming their hours. They were trying to get rid of it by the time I was leaving, but that was resisted. Not sure in the few years since whether they’ve succeeded in ditching it.
This healthcare system underestimates the value of predictable work schedules in retaining doctors. If you know your hours and holidays for the next 6 months the difficult weeks are 1000 times easier when you can prepare for them and see the light at the end of the tunnel.
Every hospital hr department should have a government mandated position, someone dedicated to ensuring the rostering complexities are met smoothly without docs having uncertainty, having to text around and hope one of their overworked colleagues can pick up an extra shift so they can make a family funeral.
A dedicated point of contact so that incoming doctors can schedule their holidays before arriving to a new post for a 3 or 6 or 12 month rotation. Someone who can liaise with a Locum agency and has a ring fenced budget for cover for sick leave etc.
In NZ you know your roster months in advance and cannot be made to work a single extra day. And if you choose to you get Locum rates
Has there been any published research on the correlation between the duration of a doctors shift and the negative impact on care?
I’m no doctor but these hours can’t be good for anyone, not least the patients.
The health system has an intractable problem in that doctors are the most important part of it but generally aren’t as influential as the larger number of unionised workers who are nurses, civil servants, etc. Add to that the division between consultants and training doctors in hospitals and it becomes disastrous.
As a hospital doctor, I’ve never worked less than 48 hours in a week
[removed]
Why can’t we just hire more and pay them better
I don’t understand this
I would have thought 1 in 4 workers in general do more than 48 hours a week, or maybe I’m just a chump!
I think it was evident during Covid the social respect we had for healthcare providers. Including paramedics nurses and firefighters etc. then the same people we clapped out the window as a mark of respect, we turned on them and abused them in the comments when the same people looked for pay rises over the last year.
Why do they go and work abroad. It’ll get worse.
Completely ridiculous. Firstly, working those hours will inevitably result in fatigue, which will lead to mistakes. That’s potentially a matter of life and death.
Secondly, it makes it effectively impossible to be a parent. I did some work at a house in Howth last year where both parents were surgeons. They had a full time nanny for their three kids. The parents left and 6am and returned at about 8pm pretty much every day. They hardly saw their kids, except at weekends and during holidays. The couple were probably earning over €500k combined a year, but their quality of life was brutal. I wouldn’t do that job myself, I want to be in my kids’ life.
The problem is that the medical profession never modernised. Other jobs have reasonable working hours and a work life balance. For some reason we decided that the medical profession should be different
Comments are closed.