by Kaitlyn Edwards

Created on: September 15, 2010   Last Updated: November 30, 2011

Junior doctors, who are in trainee posts, in the UK now can work a maximum of 48 hours due to the European Working Time Directive.

From a patient's perspective, I would not like to be treated by a doctor who had worked 80 hours in the last week. They will not be functioning correctly, they will be tired, and the will be likely to make mistakes.

From a nurse's perspective, however, the 48 hour working week is not good news. So nurses get more autonomy, take over yet more of the junior doctor's jobs (not a bad thing - professional autonomy is good). But, we don't get extra pay. It means, however, that there are fewer doctors around when you need them. I work on a very busy admissions unit. There are patients from different medical teams, and trying to get hold of the correct team is a nightmare. You start off bleeping the most junior doctors, working upwards, and you find that none of them are in. So you have to phone the consultant or get the on-call team (who should be clerking new patients, not dealing with other issues) to deal with something,

Despite the fact that these junior doctors occupy training posts, they are still the ward doctors, they are qualified. But their first few years out of medical school are for training and consolidation of learning.

I have spoken to many senior doctors who are concerned at the reduced working week of junior doctors. They will have less exposure to patients, less exposure to the clinical scenarios. And this has been combated by giving them time out of clinical duties for training. Great, if that training were useful. I spoken to a junior doctor recently who informed me he had spent a couple of hours in training that explained how cannulation details are inputted in to the computerised observation charts - the computerised observation charts are here, but the cannulation details are on a separate, paper chart. The problem being that doctors cannot input data on to the computerised observation charts, they do not fill out the paper cannulation charts ever and it is something they do not actually need to know about.

Whilst a maximum 48 hour working week is not necessarily the answer, 80 hours a week is surely over working these people, putting their own health at risk and risking the lives of the patients for whom they care.

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