Doctors and nurses are resigning en masse because of pressure to work longer hours, reports suggest.
Organisations are watching the “Great Resignation”, a trend first highlighted in The Economist, with “startled” officials pointing to barriers to the official 5pm “cut-off” for doctors working in teaching hospitals.
Labor UN and lobby groups claim that non-striking doctors – and some nurses – are breaking work rules to continue working extra hours. Doctors who wish to work beyond the cut-off say they risk upsetting their patients, but leave it to the contract of a hospital’s hospital trust to decide whether an extra period will become relevant.
The Guardian recently spoke to a male doctor at University College London Hospital who had discovered a new strain of a strain of swine flu, to treat a 15-year-old boy who collapsed while playing football at his school.
“Not only had we been kept off the weekend shift, but after looking at the children’s records, we realised that the boy actually only had one exhibition, not the usual three, so we had to keep him on overnight so we could keep an eye on him and do the tests,” he said.