Working Time Directives: The Effect on Patient Care

Hospital staff are vulnerable to falling victim to dangerous working practices in an attempt to meet European rules on doctors working hours. According to the BBC website, the Royal College of Surgeons data on the number of rotas complying with the 48 hour week indicated a fall of 6% between March and April.

The College indicates that there are 3000 posts vacant in the UK but not enough medics to fill the posts under current working time regulations.

The European Working Time Directive has been a real burden for the NHS since it was introduced in 1998, with junior doctors losing out on many hours of training and lowering the quality of care that they are able to provide as a result. According to the College president John Black, moving to a 48 hour week would not only mean junior doctors losing out on valuable training time but that it will mean losing up to half a million hours of doctor patient time a year from the NHS, if they are forced to comply with the directive.

This potential implications of this are that with lower interactions between patients and doctors it becomes much more likely that there are going to be key details missed in diagnosing conditions and clearly lower standards of care are going to be a by product of this and the reduction in training for junior doctors. This could lead to higher numbers of clinical negligence claims being put forward. Indeed, John Black has already highlighted the report of the Healthcare Commission into the Mid-Staffordshire NHS Trust, which lists one of the main contributing factors to its failing as low staffed surgical rotors, as an example of what the reduction in hours might produce.