JMDA Raises Concerns Over Shortage of Medical Interns

Medical interns across Jamaica are on strike citing excessive workload and poor working conditions. The Jamaica Medical Doctors Association (JMDA )says it's backing the industrial action.

 

President of the association Dr Renee Badroe explained that some interns are required to work between 24 and 32 hours on alternate days, while others have reportedly worked as many as 56 consecutive hours.

 

Badroe said, “The interns are required to stay on hospital compound. So, if for example if a patient has an emergency, the patient needs IV access to get drips, they are the first point of contact. So, they have to be nearby. We were protesting, one for the working hours and two, for the working the conditions that they would have to stay.”

 

She said 56-hour rotations do not necessarily happen at every institution, indicating what happens more often, is the one in two, where people work 24 and 32 hours consecutively. This, she said, happens at hospitals like Spanish Town Hospital, May Pen Hospital, Mandeville Regional Hospital, Savanna-La-Mar Public Hospital, St Ann’s Bay Hospital, Annotto Bay Hospital and the University Hospital of the West Indies (UHWI).

 

Dr Badroe argues that the long hours are also undermining the quality of clinical training and raising concerns about the sustainability of the current internship system.

 

“If you have a doctor that is burnt out and tired, remember the purpose of internship is really to hone your clinical skills because you're officially a doctor now, right? You need to just get your license to be able to practice in private practice or practice independently.

If you have a doctor that's burnt out, an intern that's burnt out, that's going to affect what skills they develop, how they put in an access, how they recognize certain diseases and how they treat it, how rapidly they respond to emergencies – because when you are burnt out and tired and you worked so many hours consecutively, it's like diminishing returns. So, we were really concerned about the clinical acumen of these doctors and the doctors to come.”

 

Dr Badroe commended the interns who fought not for themselves, as they have almost finished internship which ends at the end of June or in July – she said they are fighting for those to come.

 

In response, the JMDA is calling for additional internship post and temporary staffing measures to reduce the burden on existing interns. Dr Dadroe says the changes must be implemented urgently warning that without intervention incoming interns will face the same working conditions.

“When you have a tired doctor that tired doctor has to go home sometime and when that doctor has to go home what we end up with is car accidents or near misses. I, myself, have been in a near miss as an intern and I've had a classmate of mine that had in the same person had an accident twice.”

 

She said, “In this recent batch, we've had four accidents and one near miss that I've heard of. So, you can imagine that the working hours are long and they affect your judgment.”

 

In the meantime, Dr Badroe is asking for the public's patience.

 

“Jamaica, we love you and we're asking you to have patience with us. And as we fight for you and fight for the dignity of your care. We ask that you understand what the measures that we have had to take, don't cuss us. We have had to take these measures in order to ensure that your relative, your daughter, your son, you are properly cared for with dignity and the best that the system has to offer you.”