JUNIOR doctors are working more than 100 hours over almost two weeks before they get a day off in Scottish hospitals.
Four years after 23-year-old doctor Lauren Connelly was killed in a crash driving home from Inverclyde Royal after an intense run of shifts, an investigation has revealed many health boards are still asking young medics to work 12 days in a row.
Health board NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde, which employed Dr Connelly, has among the most onerous rotas scheduling junior doctors to spend 114 hours at work between days off.
They can do this despite European legislation setting a 48 hour working week because they can meet the requirements of the law on paper by averaging working patterns over six months.
Following Dr Connelly's death, just seven weeks into her medical career, her father Brian revealed the shift patterns his daughter had covered. There were a number of long stretches including a 12 day run of 107 hours.
He has been campaigning for health boards to deliver the European Working Time Directive in spirit, as well as on paper, for the safety of patients and doctors.
However, information obtained under Freedom of Information legislation has revealed nine out of 11 mainland health boards continue to ask junior doctors to work more than 12 days in a row.
This is despite a Scottish Government target to limit the number of back-to-back days shifts to seven by February.
So far only NHS Forth Valley has met this goal. The maximum run in NHS Borders is nine days, but in Ayshire and Arran, Dumfries and Galloway, Grampian, GGC, Highland, Fife, Lanarkshire, Lothian and Tayside some junior doctors still work 12 day stretches.
Some boards did not know how many working hours this involved, while others calculated 100-114 hours.
The boards say the number of doctors required to work such rotas is relatively small. The say it is not a frequent occurrence and will be phased out early next year.
Dr Chris Sheridan, chair of the British Medical Association's Scottish Junior Doctor's Committee, said he had worked 12 day shift patterns: "By the end you are very tired. With the end in sight you realise that although you are working as hard as you can that your performance is not what is was at day two or three."
He described long working hours as "a patient safety issue".
Mr Ian Ritchie, president of the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh, has called for the NHS to rethink the way it uses and trains young medics.
He said since 2007 a reduction in middle grade staff meant one doctor could be covering a lot more patients. Advances in medicine also mean patients require more monitoring and investigations, adding to the intensity of the work, he said.
"I would not say that doctors are not as tough as we used to be, I think they have got it a lot tougher than we ever had it back in the 1970s," he added.
Mr Ritchie also said it was inevitable doctors would work longer than their rostered hours, firstly because they were motivated to complete tasks for patients and secondly because they would have to cover when colleagues were off sick. "If someone goes off sick because of stress which happens to a proportion of the doctors, someone else has to pick up the pieces," he said. "Even the most resilient of people will eventually get fed up. That is why you get the potential for people to say that they are not going to do medicine any more, or to go to Australia or New Zealand."
Earlier this year The Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Glasgow revealed double the proportion of junior doctors leave Scotland to work overseas compared to the rest of the UK, at 16.6 per cent.
However, the Scottish Government has taken action to improve their working conditions.
They set a target to stop junior doctors working seven night shifts back to back and The Herald's investigation shows health boards have met this aim.
Health Secretary Shona Robison has also promised not to adopt Westminster's controversial shake-up of the junior doctor contract which includes extending the hours worked on standard pay.
She Robison said: “Junior doctors are our future medical leaders and we are committed to making Scotland as attractive a place as possible for them to work. Scotland already enjoys a reputation for high quality medical education and training and we are committed to maintaining this.
“In February this year we stopped junior doctors working seven full shift nights in a row and by February 2016 no junior doctor will work for any more than seven days in a row in any shift pattern. We are the only country in the UK to take such action."
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