Evidence of a worsening junior doctor recruitment crisis following the introduction of the European Working Time Directive has come to light this week.
Jobs4medical, an online recruitment service, announced that it has a record number of doctor vacancies on its site.
It is currently advertising 7,500 locum and permanent doctors’ positions, which also includes consultants and GPs.
The highest number of vacancies posted on the site for secondary care are in accident and emergency followed by paediatrics and psychiatry.
Vicky Scott, operations manager at Jobs4Medical, said: “We have seen a huge increase this year in doctors’ positions. We are getting feedback from recruiters that it’s very difficult to recruit doctors into these roles. We are finding that the movement isn’t there in the market that there was a year ago or maybe even eight months ago. It has got worse since August.”
Across Cumbria there are currently between 16 and 20 specialist junior doctor vacancies. Recruiters from the North Cumbria University Trust recently travelled to India in a bid to recruit 10 new juniors.
In an interview on Radio Cumbria junior doctor committee chair Dr Shree Datta said: “There are shortages throughout UK and we need to look at why…there are these shortages. What it means is that junior docs on the shop floor working harder than they otherwise would be. Tired doctors are not the best doctors.”
Reports are also coming in of the way that recruitment problems are beginning to impact on services. Hospital managers in Wales recently decided that adult brain surgery will be permanently centralised in Cardiff because of the nationwide shortage of junior doctors.
Dr Richard Lewis, Welsh secretary of the BMA, said the shortage of middle grade and junior doctors in Wales could be contributing to the higher number of complaints about medical staff.
Complaints about hospital services have risen by 15%. Among these two-thirds were about inpatient and outpatient care and another one in 10 about accident and emergency. More than half concerned medical staff.
“We have a shortage of junior and middle-grade doctors and that undoubtedly puts pressure on those staff who are trying to deliver a good service,” he said. “But when we have an under-doctored workforce, there will be increasing pressure on the ability of services to deliver.”
Rural and outlying areas are having the greatest struggle to fill posts. NHS managers in Scotland are currently relying on temporary cover to maintain their complement of junior doctors at Caithness General Hospital. Since August the hospital has been unable to fill three of the nine permanent posts.
A BMA spokesman commented: “Clearly the problem is getting worse. The trouble is much of the evidence is currently anecdotal. It’s an evolving picture because there is a problem with the quality of the data because, for example, there are issues with junior doctors working more hours and falsifying their hours because they want access to training.
“It is difficult to get a handle on the exact impact the EWTD is having but clearly the shortage of junior doctors is going to be putting pressure on the system particularly where there are recruitment problems already.”
Tags: Juniors, Recruitment, WTD
When will SENIORS decide that the lack of proper junior staff support is putting patient safety at risk? If it has reached this point, are they ‘advising’ management that it is unsafe to continue to provide the service? If they are having to cover for the lack of juniors, are they curtailing other work? (How about THEIR 48hr EWTD?) Perhaps it is only when the service has to be cut back to “emergencies only”, will ‘management’ and their masters, the politicians, wake up to the fact that the present system (largely due to the EWTD but also to the restriction of foreign graduates from outside the EU) is not working - and the whole issue of providing a service (24hrs per day for 365 days per year) within a department MUST be addressed. Retired Orthopod