On this site I have warned readers about the pernicious impact of the EU’s several attempts to limit working hours by law, especially in the UK National Health Service.
See eg here.
And here.
My best friend happens to be an NHS consultant. He has warned me for years about the way the Working Time Directive has scaled back training hours for doctors, which must lead to more blunders in treating patients when the doctors are finally working alone.
Plus he made a not so obvious point about ‘information decay’. The more shifts you introduce into hospital work as caused by the WTD, the information about patients has to be passed from doctor to doctor more often and so tends to decline. Decisions become less smart.
Not to forget the fact that a new trend must emerge, namely slowing down one’s effort as a shift draws to an end and leaving any tricky issue to the next doctor.
All of which is duly happening:
A year after the EU directive limiting workers to a 48-hour week was brought in for the NHS, 80 per cent of consultants polled by the Royal College of Surgeons said quality of care had already been damaged by the changes, with risks to patients who are repeatedly "handed" from one shift to the next.
The survey also found that two thirds of junior surgeons said their hours in training had been cut.
Consultants who took part in the study were most damning about the impact of the changes on their trainees.
Among responses from more than 500 senior surgeons taking part were repeated warnings that the rules were creating a generation of "clock-watchers" with a "lazy work ethic" who no longer felt personal responsibility for their patients.
Trainees were now spending so little time in operating theatres that they would lack the "cutting skills" required to perform safely when they became consultants, many warned.
College president John Black urged the Government to take urgent action to address the concerns, having pledged in its Coalition agreement that it would work to limit the application of the EU rules in the UK.
He described the situation facing the NHS as "acutely urgent".
Mr Black said: "Without action we are going to see a generation of specialists with less experience than any that have gone before."
As previously noted, the vile Precautionary Principle is used to stop all sorts of actions by citizens on a ‘just in case’ basis. But when it comes to official policies which are obviously likely to lead to people dying at the hands of the state, it is nowhere to be seen.
Madness:
The heart surgeon, 48, said that by the time she became a consultant, nine years ago, she had undertaken 900 cardiac operations. The current generation were likely to become senior doctors after performing less than 300, she said.
Share this page:
