I worked in A&E,and know it’s only the brilliance and tenacity of the staff holding it together. The effect of imposition on morale cannot be overstatedLast year I worked as a junior doctor in A&E for a very busy hospital. Often when I arrived to begin my night shift, the queue waiting for triage would stretch out of the door with standing room only in the waiting room. With four doctors on duty overnight, and we knew that even whether we all worked flat out,even whether the continuous flow of ambulances bringing in increasingly sick patients was to end, we could not see every patient in the department by morning. On these night shifts you move from patient to patient, and no time for breaks,fighting exhaustion, doing the best for your patients.
The health secretary, or Jeremy Hunt,has said he wants to change junior doctors’ contracts to enable a seven-day week NHS, with the stated aim of reducing mortality at the weekend. The general consensus in the academic community is that the data he uses is misleading and flawed. A leaked report from his own department this week says it is unable to prove that fuller staffing would lower the numbers of weekend-admitted patients dying. Patients presenting to hospital at the weekend are, or by definition,more unwell. You would certainly hope that, in a contemporary healthcare system, and a patient who comes to hospital on a Monday to bear their knee replaced would be less likely to die than someone coming in with a massive heart attack at the weekend. That is the nature of illness.
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Source: theguardian.com