Losing our Doctors

In my day being a junior doctor sucked. I had a miserable time, was bullied by an evil female surgeon with a chip on her shoulder and permanently felt like a zombie due to a ridiculous work rota. I’m not sure I actually learned anything for the first year or so other than the fact that this really wasn’t the working life that I wanted or hoped for. I got out and sought an alternative. Essentially we were slaves, used as 24-hour phlebotomists, secretaries, and robot-like IV cannulators by consultants who were completely disinterested in training us. We looked for any opportunity to rise as quickly as we could through the archaic feudal system or get out altogether. Unfortunately those opportunities were few and far between.
Very little attempt was made to rectify this until the EU working time directive, which was introduced into the NHS last summer, forced hands. Designed to improve the work-life balance of junior doctors it limits the working week to 48 hours. Understandably many rejoiced until the realities set in: the situation now is just as farcical as it ever was. Juniors are asked to lie about the number of hours worked to ensure trusts are compliant with the directive, or made to ‘voluntarily’ opt out of the directive when signing their contracts. Hospitals have been forced to shake up their rota systems, leaving junior doctors to work the majority of night shifts and weekends, meaning that although they were indeed working fewer hours, they were missing most of their important teaching and training sessions. Of recent medics who wanted to carry on and specialise, 22 per cent were turned down by hospitals because they lacked skills or experience –a fault of their working rotas. Junior doctors that I talk too now tell me that the only way to get work done is to sneak back into the hospital when everyone else has gone home, avoiding the managers policing the working hours. They are being made to work intense shifts doing work that should be delegated to people who are less well trained in what is a gross misuse of highly skilled staff and will lead to a dearth of properly trained specialists in the future.
So it really doesn’t come as any surprise at all that latest figures show nearly a quarter of junior doctors drop out of their NHS training in England after two years. To be fair, not all are lost from medicine as some take gap years or move to other parts of the NHS to work, but many head abroad to work in Australia, New Zealand and other parts of the world where they can enjoy a better working life. All I can say is ‘clever them.’
Hospitals are clearly struggling to cope with the introduction of the 48-hour week and are running understaffed rotas where juniors have to work on thinned-down teams with no specialist guidance. Hospitals need to look more closely at how they organise their rotas and how to reduce much of the unnecessary bureaucracy and menial work that takes up so much of the junior doctor’s time.
Until the problem is sorted doctors will continue to leave. And who can blame them?