Hospital doctors are being sent home from daytime shifts and told to come back and work overnight in the latest stark illustration of the NHS’s crippling staff shortage.
Medics are having to change their plans at the last minute because hospitals cannot find any others to plug gaps in the night shift medical rota and need to ensure they have enough doctors on duty.
Hospital bosses are forcing last-minute shift changes on junior doctors – trainees below the level of consultant up to the level of senior registrar – because staff sickness and the scarcity of locum medics has left them struggling to ensure patients’ safety is maintained overnight.
One trainee doctor in south-west of England told how they started their shift as planned at 8am. However, “by mid-morning the doctor that was meant to be working that night, that I would hand over to, had called in ill”.
The doctor stopped working at 11am, drove home – an hour away – and came back to work the night shift at 11pm. “By the time I returned I had already worked for three hours and driven for three hours. That’s an extra six hours on top of a busy night shift of 12.5 hours,” they said.
Dr Julia Patterson, the chief executive of EveryDoctor, said: “We are hearing of escalating problems with NHS doctors being forced to work unsafe, unfair hours."
“Patient safety is of paramount importance to all doctors, but this situation is simply not sustainable. When mistakes occur, staff are blamed. But staff are working in an unworkable system.”
Source: The Guardian, 11 July 2022
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