Vacancies mean doctors are 'pressured to work overtime'
01-04-2008
Staff shortages mean junior doctors may be being pressured into working long hours with extra pay, it has been suggested.
There is a least one vacancy on 29 per cent of staff rotas, research by the British Medical Association (BMA) has revealed.
Some of the junior doctors questioned by the BMA stated that there are as many as four our five vacancies on the rotas they use.
It is "fundamentally wrong" to pressure doctors into working unpaid overtime, chairman of the BMA's Junior Doctors Committee Ram Moorthy claimed.
"This was a problem that employers and the government could and should have foreseen and it's unfair that doctors are having to prop up rotas without being paid for it," he remarked.
In the end, it is "the quality of patient care" that will suffer, Mr Moorthy said.
Earlier this year, the government reserved all NHS training posts for UK medical students from 2009.
Digg 
Delicious 
Reddit 
StumbleUpon 
Google 
Technorati 
Netvouz