10 June 1999 Edition
Doctors' disgrace
It is completely unacceptable that junior doctors in 26-County hospitals are forced to work 100-hour weeks. It is unacceptable not only to the workers doing these shifts but also to the patients receiving treatment. It is shameful that EU social affairs ministers decided unanimously to extend the deadline by which member states would implement the working time directive. The Dublin government's defence of a 13-year delay before they fulfil the working time directive is also shameful and unacceptable.
However this scandal did not come to the boil overnight. It stems from the work culture of the Irish health service and health services elsewhere that created and justified these intolerable conditions.
Junior doctors worked these hours for years on the basis that it was part of the health professional hierarchy. In future years they would be rewarded for their early years of exploitation with high wages and good jobs. The cream rising to be consultants and double jobbing in the public and private sectors.
Now they find, in the words of the Irish Medical Organisation's (IMO) industrial relations executive Fintan Hourihan, that the state was ``producing yellow pack doctors going around in a zombie-like stupor... with most consultants being chosen from those who have trained abroad''.
It is not enough to just lower junior doctors' hours. There is a need to reform the whole medical hierarchy, particularly the career structures of doctors, nurses and health care managers.
The elite position of doctors in health care structures needs to be reformed. The aim of providing a health service should not be just one of giving a lucrative career with unjustified social status to the state's doctors. It should be one where everybody, regardless of income or where they live, have equal access to a proper health service, without waiting lists and without a two-tiered public and private structure.
However this scandal did not come to the boil overnight. It stems from the work culture of the Irish health service and health services elsewhere that created and justified these intolerable conditions.
Junior doctors worked these hours for years on the basis that it was part of the health professional hierarchy. In future years they would be rewarded for their early years of exploitation with high wages and good jobs. The cream rising to be consultants and double jobbing in the public and private sectors.
Now they find, in the words of the Irish Medical Organisation's (IMO) industrial relations executive Fintan Hourihan, that the state was ``producing yellow pack doctors going around in a zombie-like stupor... with most consultants being chosen from those who have trained abroad''.
It is not enough to just lower junior doctors' hours. There is a need to reform the whole medical hierarchy, particularly the career structures of doctors, nurses and health care managers.
The elite position of doctors in health care structures needs to be reformed. The aim of providing a health service should not be just one of giving a lucrative career with unjustified social status to the state's doctors. It should be one where everybody, regardless of income or where they live, have equal access to a proper health service, without waiting lists and without a two-tiered public and private structure.