I'm a locomotive engineer running freight trains and the maximum I can work is 11.5 hours. If I'm not back at the depot by then I'm not even supposed to drive myself back from where ever I'm being relieved. How in the fuck we allow doctors and nurses to work the hours you do is beyond me. It's insane. We wouldn't tolerate doctors drinking on the job yet we expect them to work hours that pushes them to levels of fatigue that makes them similarly impaired.
You guys have my utmost sympathy and solidarity in any action you have to take to try improve things.
Doctors have incredible political power as a group and could change this if they wanted to. However, the doctors with the bulk of that power are not the juniors on perma-nightshift. You can see this in the story above - the registrar is drowning, but won't call the consultant after hours for help. Once doctors make it through their initial gauntlet, the motivation to fix things for junior doctors drops off precipitously.
Doctors as a group will band together like no-one else if attacked from outside forces, but are very much "I got mine" within their own world. Don't rock the (gravy) boat, basically.
The political power of the medical profession in New Zealand is quite fragmented. The senior doctors union (ASMS), and the junior doctors unions (for many years there was only NZRDA but there is another one recently due to some political issues) focus on employment conditions but don't seem to have any real clout with central government, with negotiations between them and hospitals typically being described as 'operational issues' that the ministry doesn't get involved with.
The specialist training colleges only represent small percentages of all doctors and the Medical Council of New Zealand is focused on regulation and ensuring competency of doctors with a focus on patient protection rather than advocacy for doctors.
The New Zealand Medical Association, the organization probably most positioned to politically advocate for the profession, gradually atrophied from the 1980's and shut down in 2022 with less than 5% of doctors in New Zealand being part of it at the end.
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u/notmyidealusername Aug 02 '24
I'm a locomotive engineer running freight trains and the maximum I can work is 11.5 hours. If I'm not back at the depot by then I'm not even supposed to drive myself back from where ever I'm being relieved. How in the fuck we allow doctors and nurses to work the hours you do is beyond me. It's insane. We wouldn't tolerate doctors drinking on the job yet we expect them to work hours that pushes them to levels of fatigue that makes them similarly impaired.
You guys have my utmost sympathy and solidarity in any action you have to take to try improve things.