Brexit: Medical care could step back in time

Writing in the British Medical Journal on 22 April, Kosmas Paraskevas, a vascular surgeon from Newcastle-upon-Tyne explained how Brexit could threaten doctors’ working time.  This could have a direct detrimental impact on patient care. 

 

The Working Time Directive provides EU workers with the right to work no more than 48 hours per week. This was introduced to protect the safety and health of workers, and in this example, the health of their patients too.  As  “Brexit” could force hundreds of overseas doctors to leave the UK, this could mean that the EU Directive 48 hour week maximum working time might no longer be sustainable for doctors. An increase of the remaining doctors’ working time could become necessary to counterbalance this shortage of doctors.

 

It is known that long  working hours are associated with an increase in often fatal medical errors, and indeed this comes as no surprise.  It is a long time since I was a hospital doctor but I have not forgotten the nightmare of being on continuous call from Friday morning to Monday evening and from one weekday morning to the following evening.  Patients were less questioning of the service in those days.  Nowadays they expect and deserve better than to be faced by an exhaused young doctor when at their most vulnerable.  We cannot step back in time to the bad old days.