The Workplace Relations Commission
(WRC) has begun a process evaluating NCHD working hours at two hospitals following a request from the IMO, the Medical Independent (MI) understands.
This is
due to the union’s ongoing concerns about the accuracy of European Working Time
Directive (EWTD) compliance data published by the HSE.
Mr
Anthony Owens, IMO Director of Industrial Relations (Consultants and NCHDs),
told MI: “I understand they have visited
University Hospital Kerry and Beaumont [Hospital]. I don’t know the outcome of
those visits because it is a process the WRC guards very closely, but I
understand those visits have taken place.”
A
spokesperson for the Department of Business, Enterprise and Innovation said
that the WRC “does not comment on individual cases or investigations”.
Mr Owens
underlined that the IMO’s NCHD committee is “very concerned” about current
working hours. In April, at the committee’s national meeting, Chair Dr Paddy
Hillery referred to “increasing stories” of NCHDs working shifts in excess of
36 hours.
As of June 2019, HSE figures show compliance at 97 per
cent for the 24-hour maximum shift and 83 per cent for the average 48-hour
week. However, official data also shows significant deficits in compliance,
including just 17 per cent of interns at Beaumont Hospital recorded as
compliant with the 48-hour average week in July (compared with 70 per cent in
June) and 36 per cent of interns at the Mater Misericordiae University Hospital
(compared with 76 per cent in June).
The Medical Council’s latest Your Training
Counts report, which collected data in 2017, found that over
one-third of trainee respondents reported working 60 hours or more in a typical
week. Trainees who worked longer hours were more likely to have been involved
in an adverse event than those who worked fewer hours.
The IMO
conducted its own survey on NCHD working hours, with findings published in its
annual report for 2018.
Forty per cent reported working more than 24-hour shifts;
over 80 per cent had worked more than 48 hours in a single week; and 35 per
cent reported that the means by which working hours were recorded at their work
site was not accurate.
The union said it seemed clear that
hospitals were, in too many cases, “reporting roster compliance as opposed to
actual working hours’ compliance.”
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