The NHS is facing a Serious Junior Doctor Shortage
Posted by Lee Scott, MP for Ilford North, at 14:16, Wed 25 October 2006:
The present Government's signed up to new EU working hours rules. This will severely limit the amount of time medical staff can spend on duty. It has now emerged that within three years the National Health Service will be short of 8,000 junior doctors. Inevitably vital services will be reduced and patients will suffer.
Back in 2004, as Minister of State for Health, John Hutton promised that the EU Working Time Directive would not lead to any restrictions on access to health care.
At the moment, junior hospital doctors work 58 hours a week. This is to be cut to 56 hours in 2007 and then to 48 hours a week by 2009 under the Directive. The time doctors spend 'on call', when they are on duty but not necessarily on wards, will soon be counted as working hours.
The shortage junior doctors crisis comes at a time when the NHS is already struggling with a financial crisis, which is leading to ward closures, staff redundancies and service reductions.
There is not going to be easy answers to the problems facing the NHS. However, David Cameron has recently unveiled radical Conservative plans to remove politicians from the day to day management of the National Health Service.
Let me know what you think.
Lee Scott.
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Posted by Jenny karling, 16:35, Wed 25 October 2006: (Is this post abusive?) #
I think the sooner the British public can get their heads around the fact that the Labour government has ruined the NHS for good, the better. The problem is this: You have a great number of EU and other citizens coming in and using the service without ever having paid a penny into it. Of course it's crumbling. It's like having a house full of people and only two or three of them contributing to it. There will never be anyone in Parliament who is willing to stand up and say this as they will be accused of being racist etc. I never gave much thought to this until a local hospital employee explained the situation to me a few years ago, she was an immigrant herself about 35 years ago.
The pot is empty.