Doctor's and Firemen's Hours

The European Working Time Directive (EWTD) is applied to the hours worked by junior doctors in the UK from today. Senior doctors are concerned that this may cause serious problems for the NHS. The bad drafting of the legislation as it affects people on call will also be a problem for the fire service. The difficulty is that, in their desire to be seen to address the problems of excessive working hours, European legislators have attempted to impose a simplistic Euopre-wide solution on a complex problem.

It is right to address the issue of working hours but it should be done on the basis of local negotiations including the key staff involved. The view of the BMA and other organisations representing doctors is that there must be a balance between the need to avoid excessive working hours and the need to ensure that junior doctors get a wide range of experience.

Another problem with the EWTD is that it fails to adequately distinguish between the impact of inactive "on call" time and that of time spent actually doing the job.

I would not want to go back to the ridiculously long hours which junior doctors had to work and be on call when I was appointed as a health authority member a little over twenty years ago. At that time some doctors were on call from 9am on Friday to 5pm on Monday every other weekend. That wasn't safe.

But I do not believe that one set of arbitrary rules about working hours which is as rigid as the EWTD can cover the needs both of every business and public service throughout europe and all the people who work in them.

Comments

Chris Whiteside said…
The comments policy on this blog does not permit posts which are actionable under the libel laws and I have therefore removed the post by "Erick the Fish".

For the record, fraudulent expenses claims are totally unacceptable whether they are from Peers, MPs, MEPs, councillors or anyone else and whatever party the person is. Those from whatever party who can be proven to have made ridiculous claims should be disciplined and, if outright fraud is involved, prosecuted.
9:40 pm
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Nick Herbert on his visit to flood hit areas of Cumbria

Please note that the post below was published more than ten year ago on 21st November 2009 Nick Herbert MP, shadow cabinet member for the Environment, Food, and Rural Affairs, was in Cumbria this morning to see the areas affected by the flooding. He writes on Conservative Home about his visit. Here is an extract. I’ve been in Cumbria today to see the areas affected by the floods. I arrived early in Keswick where I met officials from the Environment Agency. Although the river levels had fallen considerably and homes were no longer flooded, the damage to homes had been done. And the water which had got into houses wasn’t just from the river – it was foul water which had risen from the drains. I talked to fire crews who were pumping flood water back into the river, and discovered that they were from Tyne & Wear and Lancashire. They had been called in at an hours’ notice and had been working on the scene ever since, staying at a local hotel. You cannot fail to be impressed by the
Read more

Quotes of the day 19th August 2020

Image
"Wise men profit more from fools than fools from wise men; for the wise men shun the mistakes of fools, but fools do not imitate the successes of the wise."  ( Cato the Elder , who lived 234 BC - 149 BC, quoted in "Lives" by Plutarch.) There is a similar saying by Germany's Iron Chancellor, Otto von Bismarck: Benjamin Franklin is supposed to have put the same saying in a more humorous form: "Wise men profit by the mistakes of others, while fools will not learn even from their own blunders." See also this thread on the "Quote Investigator" website . Let us all be wise and learn from the events of the last few days.
Read more

Quote of the day 24th July 2020

I was moved to put the passage below forward as a quote today when I saw a horrible post on twitter from someone writing that it was "excellent" that someone who took a different view from her about Brexit had died. I won't write which way round it was so that all the Remain supporters can assume the post was from a Brexit fanatic welcoming the death of a remainer and all the Leavers can assume it was a Remainiac welcoming one less Brexiteer. There's been plenty of nasty stuff on both sides but if you catch anyone of your own viewpoint  posting something like that who might listen to you, please do call them out on it - and point out that they're giving everyone on your side of the argument a bad name. Anyway, here's the quote from John Donne.
Read more