East Lancashire doctors face working longer hours (From Lancashire Telegraph)

East Lancashire doctors face working longer hours

12:50pm Tuesday 7th July 2009 in

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DOCTORS working at Royal Blackburn Hospital and Burnley General Hospital could face working extra hours under new regulations.

East Lancashire Hospitals NHS Trust applied for doctors in certain departments at the hospitals to have work-ing hours extended from European Working Time Directive of 48 hours per week to 52 hours per week.

The Working time amendment regulation 2009 was put before Parliament on June 25 and will come into force on August 1.

Doctors affected will be those in Royal Black-burn Hospital Otorhin-olaryngology, Royal Bla- ckburn Hospital Tra-uma and Orthopaedics and Blackburn and Burnley Urgent Care Centres and Burnley General Hospital Trau-ma and Orthopaedics.

But health Trust bossess say that the extension of the work-ing hours is only a precautionary measure and patient care will not be put at risk by doctors working longer hours.

Rineke Schr-am, who is the medical direc-ctor at the Tru-st, said: “We applied for the change for Trau-ma and Orthop-aedics, Ear, Nose and Throat and in Emergency Medicine on the grounds it would allow us a little more flexibility in doct-ors’ hours in extreme circumstances.

“Thanks to successful recruitment, it now appears unlikely that we will have to use this contingency at any time in Trauma and Ortho-paedics or ENT, though it may still prove useful in Emergency Medicine.”

Before the dire-ctive was enforced acr-oss the UK, doctors throu-gohout the NHS often had wo-king weeks of 80 hours or more. Staff hours was one of the reasons given for the need to amal-gamate A & E ser-vices at Royal Blackburn Hosp-ital under the Meeting Patients’ Needs (MPN) programme.

Mrs Schram added: “Without the MPN prog-ramme, we would have been unable to meet the requirements of Europ-ean Working Time Directive in the majority of specialties, with-out drastic reductions in doctor cover.

“Through MPN, not only have we managed to meet these require-ments in all but one area, we have also greatly increased senior doctor presence out of office hours.

“Patient safety is always at the forefront when planning rotas, and the MPN model of care helps us ensure tclinicians are available, but not overworked.”