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Doctors Claim Hospitals Risking Patients' Lives With Shift Changes

Posted on: Saturday, 18 June 2005, 09:00 CDT

CHANGES to shift working systems in hospitals may be putting patients' lives at risk, doctors warned yesterday.

Last year the European working time directive limited junior doctors' shifts to no more than 13 hours followed by a break of at least 11 hours, to avoid over-tired doctors making fatal mistakes.

But junior doctors in Scotland claim health boards are implementing the new directive in dangerous ways by asking trainees to work a series of night shifts in a row.

Dr Andrew Thomson, the deputy chairman of the Scottish Junior Doctors' Committee, said: "The working time directive is a deal to reduce unsafe working practices that were in existence. The problem is trusts' poor understanding and poor implementation ... which is directly affecting the safety of patients and safety of doctors."

Research shows the safest way to rota night shifts is to make doctors work a single night, rather than a whole week in a row.

But Dr Thomson said health boards are failing to consult doctors or find the best way to work around the directive and are instead implementing serial night shifts.

He also said health boards are failing to provide a rest area for doctors' breaks.

Dr Thomson's comments come in the wake of research by the Royal College of Physicians (RCP) which found more than three-quarters of medical senior house officers and almost half of specialist registrars were working seven consecutive night shifts.

Also, doctors writing in the British Medical Journal have warned hospitals may be putting theirs and patients' lives at risk because of the way the directive is implemented.

Professor Roy Pounder, from London's Royal Free Hospital, said: "The directive aims to reduce working hours in order to improve workers' health and safety, but the current NHS shift system could threaten doctors' and, moreover, patients' safety."

Source: Scotsman, The

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