Doctors need cure for long hours, not plaster to hide them

CONCERNS about junior doctors being relentlessly overworked are far from new.

For too long we have heard stories about young medics being driven to breaking point, their judgment clouded by a lack of sleep.

Time and again, we have heard political leaders promise to act, then seen them do nothing. A disturbing new report shows just how dangerous that political failure could be.

Research by the British Medical Association suggests that patients are at risk of ‘medical error’ because doctors become so exhausted during shifts lasting ten or more hours.

With research showing the risk of being involved in an accident doubled towards the end of a 12-hour shift compared with an eighthour one, there are now calls for beds to be provided for doctors at hospitals so they don’t have to drive home at the end of a working day.

We will lose good people from medicine if standards don’t improve. The SNP Government has expended much energy in spinning the supposed triumphs of its NHS stewardship. The truth is the nationalists’ record is woeful.

A failure to reform the health service along with an inability to recruit sufficient staff means it’s not clear how the working conditions of junior doctors will be improved.

Criticised for this intolerable situation, a Scottish Government spokesman made much of the provision of mental health support. It is true those in high-pressure public service roles should receive support as a matter of course.

But it says something disturbing about this SNP Government’s sticking plaster approach that its instinct is to offer support for mental health problems rather than to suggest practical ways – such as cutting junior doctors’ hours to reasonable levels – of preventing them from materialising in the first place.