Doctors say EU working week is killing patients

October 11, 2009 by Infowars Ireland

www.timesonline.co.uk

SENIOR doctors say NHS patients are dying as a result of new European Union rules that impose a 48-hour week on hospital staff.

The Royal College of Surgeons said, in a hard-hitting report, that lives were being lost because patients had to be switched between up to four doctors every 24 hours, instead of being cared for by the same team round the clock.

Junior doctors used to work 80-hour weeks, staying on call at all times and sleeping in the hospital. Surgeons said this guaranteed continuity of treatment.

In August, EU rules were introduced limiting their working week to 48 hours. John Black, president of the college, said that, as a result, no doctor was monitoring patients for long enough to detect changes in their condition and vital medical details were being mislaid in a chain of “Chinese whispers”.

The surgeons claim that the rapid changes in shifts mean that nobody is taking personal responsibility for patients. One surgeon who responded to the survey said: “No rapport is built with the patient and no responsibility is assumed by the junior \ for the patient care. An unmitigated disaster.”

The college has compiled a dossier from ward reports by surgeons, laying out the scale of the problem. This weekend the college released details to The Sunday Times of a series of “avoidable deaths” that it claims were caused by the way in which the new limits on the working week have been implemented since August. Read full article…