The Irish Medical Organisation (IMO) has said it will expose any hospital manager who mistreats junior doctors. IMO chief executive, Mr George McNeice, highlighted the plight of these doctors. The workload and conditions of these non-consultant hospital doctors (NCHDs) are "utterly unrealistic", said Mr McNeice. In the main hospitals, managers acknowledged this, but some appeared completely indifferent.
"On occasion they even seem to delight in the plight of their NCHDs. The medical curriculum is long and arduous. Working conditions for recently qualified doctors throughout training, for whatever speciality, are generally unrealistic and poorly rewarded," he said.
Their difficulties are compounded, said Mr McNeice, when they are denied "the simple respect and dignity that is the right of every employee. It is utterly unacceptable.
"In the future the IMO will bring each and every such instance into the public domain and expose the minority, who appear to believe that this is the way to manage."
Mr McNeice said that unlike other professions such as airline pilots and truck drivers, the State's 2,600 junior doctors had no protection concerning the amount of hours they were expected to work.
He said they were the largest group of people working such excessive hours but they had been excluded from the EU Working Time Directive. "There have to be concerns about patient care when these doctors are working solidly through. Some practically live and sleep in the hospital," he said.
In his address, Mr McNeice also spoke of the place of doctors in Irish society: "Attitudes in modern Irish society have radically changed and a new, younger, self-confident generation is unlikely to be impressed by history, tradition or even Hippocrates. If we are to preserve this valuable heritage, then doctors must, as they have done in every previous generation, earn it again."
The growing popularity of alternative medicine, therapies and practitioners and "very significantly the increasing influence of women practitioners at every level, must constitute considerable challenges", he said.
In the past patients had traditionally done "as the doctor said". However a more democratic interactive relationship must prevail in the future.