----- Original Message -----
From: "Ruth Brown
> Rocky, completely agree with you and very concerned that we are selling
> ourselves, our families and our specialty short. If the country wants
> experienced senior people present, which I am sure all will agree will
> optimise patient care in direct and indirect ways, then the government
need
> to be prepared to train and employ many more of us. In the meantime, we
> should do what is right for us personally, and agree what is possible
> within our local conditions. If our department recruited at least 10 more
> appropriately trained consultants, I would be more than happy to do a
> resident session (if I could also guarantee time off afterwards).
> Meanwhile, I will continue to do a late once a week, stay long hours and
go
> grey but at least stay sane and walk out when I know my tiredness will not
> benefit patients.
I agree Ruth, I'm not trying to sell us sort, it just irritates me when I
see doctors training for years, then just as soon as they are fully trained
they sit in an office and clock off "en masse" at 5.00pm - that's total
crap - what's the point of all that training? The British system seems to be
geared towards service delivery by the trainee, except in some of the
super-surgical specialties. It appalls me when I hear of 4 or 5 consultant
departments where they all do 9-5, and I applaud that you are at least
attempting to tackle this problem. I maintain that you can do late shifts
and weekends and have a reasonable life, but as Rocky says, we need a lot
more hands on deck to do that, we need to be remunerated for it, and we
should be doing these nights with a registrar, not instead of a registrar.
And let's face it, we don't have an elective day load like other consultants
do, so we can claw back more time during the week than other consultants
can. We don't all need to be falling over each other Monday to Friday, 9-5,
as opposed to other consultants who have heavy elective commitments then. On
the contrary, some of our toughest work happens evenings and weekends.
I note that Tim Coats, Nick Jenkins and Ray McGlone clearly see the benefits
of working this way. At least Tim has decent senior staffing in Whitechapel
while Nick and Ray seem to be working a bit like myself, but at least
they're trying, and slowly working towards something better. If they simply
stuck at 9-5, management would have no incentive to hire more consultants.
Adrian Fogarty
A&E Consultant
Royal Free Hospital
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