Patients warned over shortage of doctors due to EU rule to cut hours of work

Published on Saturday 2 May 2009 19:37

SCOTLAND's junior doctors last night warned that patient services could be hit by a shortage of consultants if they are forced to comply with EU rules that cut down their working hours.

Medics said their new working week – which will be slashed from up to 56 hours now to no more than 48 in the summer – will leave them little time to hone their skills to consultant level.

Surveys show one in three junior doctors currently work more than 48 hours a week. Their professional body, the British Medical Association, yesterday said the "working time crunch" could mean the NHS starts to run short of properly trained and qualified consultants within three or four years.

The crisis comes more than a decade after the European Union first announced that it would gradually cut working hours for junior doctors, who historically spent whole days and nights on call.

The NHS said it was "confident" it could resolve any problems brought by the new time limits, but the BMA, which represents doctors, said it believed juniors would now have to spend most of their time doing anti-social night, evening and weekend shifts when training was all but impossible. Andrew Conway Morris, the deputy chairman of the BMA's Junior Doctors Committee, said his colleagues would be delighted to work fewer hours, as long as time was still found to keep up their training.

Conway Morris said: "The fact is that we will have the same number of doctors trying to do the same amount of work but with less time. Something is going to have to give and we think it will be training.

"We know that some NHS services would simply collapse if junior doctors don't agree to step up and do the anti-social rotas. We aren't happy to do that, but we are willing to, because we know how devastating it would be for patients if we did not.

"We believe that the NHS will cope with the European working time directive, because it always copes and keeps services going. But it will do so at the cost of its staff and the cost of its training."

A Scottish Government spokesman said: "We are working hard to make sure all NHS Scotland staff are compliant with the Working Time Directive by August. We are currently working with NHS boards across Scotland to help them with rota scheduling to make sure best practice is shared and we are confident that any issues will be resolved."