Unsustainable..

Salam..

Not so long a day ago, I had vented about the stretch me and my fellow colleagues in ED are facing to keep the department, at the very least, crawling, if not walking.. I can say with very confident that I enjoy working in Emergency Medicine, and that is a fact.. But right now, because of shortage of personnel in the job, it feels like I am being sucked into the vortex of 'Job comes first, Life only then'.. It's like in the army!

Rota

The new rota has been proven rather 'inhumane' for us.. Tough, to say the least.. At the present, we are doing 12-2-14-break schedule.. That's twelve days straight (5x 9-hour shifts, then 2x 12-hour shifts, and then 5x 8-hour shifts) starting on Monday morning, finishing midnight on Saturday the week after.. Even that seems breathtaking to explain!

And after that is the long-awaited, highly-anticipated weekend off.. That's the '2' part..

And then, the nightmare stretch begins..

Five days of 6pm-2am shift Monday to Friday,
then 2pm-2am Saturday and Sunday,
then midnight-8am Monday to Friday,
then 8pm-8am Saturday and Sunday..

And all that is really hard to swallow..

After all that

After all that, then we get the deserved break for a week (after a week of nights, which is standard) but also have the opportunity to pull an annual leave entitled to us for another week.. Which in total gives us just under two weeks of leave.. Now, doesn't that sound lavish?

Of course, it does.. And I like the breaks! But, is it humanely possible for a doctor to work 26 out of 28 days, albeit shift work.. Sure, you wouldn't let a pilot fly an airplane for more than twelve hours, you don't see a truck driver on their ninth hour on their shift!

Venting.. Is that all there is?

Not really.. There is also the legality of it.. The European Working Time Directives (EWTD) has documented that doctors are to only be allowed to work at a maximum of 48 hours per week.. I'm sure by now you have your calculators out and start adding up the hours than you and I are clocking every week..

As for me :
Week 1 - 69 hours
Week 2 - 40 hours
Week 3 - 64 hours
Week 4 - 64 hours

Ooh.. That is easy way off the scale for legality, isn't it?

Well, hopefully the people of Ireland will understand this situation and will start talking and writing to local and national politicians, newspapers, TV stations and make the policy-makers understand what they are doing putting the populations life in the hands of overworked medical professionals..


Hopefully, in the next near future, Miss Harney will change something and make the system better, before it all collapses and lives are sacrificed..

Salam..