Young doctors dangerously overworked

[Messugga]

If personnel have to do 30h shifts then all it says is that the manager in charge of the duty roster is doing a bad job.

Do you have any idea of how short staffed public hospitals are? Lose these shifts and you'll get through patients even slower.

 

[theratman]

Do you have any idea of how short staffed public hospitals are? Lose these shifts and you'll get through patients even slower.

This is unfortunately the crux of the matter, not enough doctors.

 

[Messugga]

This is unfortunately the crux of the matter, not enough doctors.

And the pressures of work is causing more and more senior staff to leave the public sector and to go private. This causes public hospitals to be even more short staffed. They're shutting down departments at some hospitals.

 

[noxibox]

I have friends who are recent grads. They're pulling R30k take home with less than 1 year experience..(last I checked).

Since they're talking about commonly working 300 hours per month their pay isn't high.

Do you have any idea of how short staffed public hospitals are? Lose these shifts and you'll get through patients even slower.

The long shifts might seem like a solution, but it is very likely that their efficiency is significantly degraded and error rate dramatically increased.

 

[w1z4rd]

Another thing to consider with these doctors, in East London, my wife is expected to work at two different hostpitals and about 3 clinics. Sometimes her shifts will be half a day at one hostpital, and then another half day at at another hospital. The distance between the two hostpitals is about 40km and the 2nd hospital is outside of East London. The clinics are very deep in townships or informal settlements. No vechile allowance is offered, no security, no transport. Since my wife is a foreign national it took her a while to get her drivers. It was very hard to drive her around all the time until she got it. :/

Now her visa is about to expire and there are issues, this is depiste the fact that she has been living here for 6 years, working in the government for 2 years, we have a 1 year old daughter. The other day the hospital (not me) had to supply her with a letter promising to cover the costs of air fees if they need to deport her due to visa issues :/

Things have got a lot worse in the Visa department now that a Gupta company runs it. We used to be able to go to home affiars here in East London, now we have to pay several thousand to mission to PE, stay the night, pay the R1500 "fee" that they have randomly decided to charge, only to be told that X document is missing (but was never requested before). The money is non-refundable.

Its a huge scam. So my poor overworked wife is very stressed that the government will throw her out the country and seperate her from her family here.

This government is a #$%%.

 

[schumi]

‘Exhausted doctors taking drugs to cope’

Cape Town - A senior doctor has disclosed that doctors are taking prescription drugs to cope with working shifts of up to 36 hours and more.

He said senior and junior doctors were resorting to desperate measures to stay awake while on duty.
This comes as Health Minister Aaron Motsoaledi’s spokesperson, Joe Maila, said the department acknowledged that doctors worked long hours and were looking to remedy the situation.

The department has asked the Health Professions Council of SA (HPCSA) to review the policy and said the hours doctors worked could be adjusted.

The senior said many doctors were on anti-depressants, and that others take sleeping pills to fall asleep after working long shifts.

More at: http://www.iol.co.za/news/south-africa/western-cape/exhausted-doctors-taking-drugs-to-cope-2037294

 

[oldtimerZA]

Since they're talking about commonly working 300 hours per month their pay isn't high.

Just my experience with what I hear from friends.(Have 2 friends who are graduates). Also they manage to have plenty of time to enjoy going out and partying and the like . So it's not all work work work work . Like someone said earlier in the thread .This is probably that particular hospital not being managed correclty(on top of the short staff supply).

Easy solution to this (and 90% of humanities problems currently) is to put a population cap in place. So that there won't be so many million people to have to cater to. Unfortunately having children is a Human Right.