Doctors waste time on 'menial' jobs

Some doctors ended up pushing trolleys

Doctors working at night in the UK's hospitals spend much of their time form-filling rather than treating patients, says a survey.

The findings of the research, carried out jointly by the BMA and Department of Health, follow reports of doctor shortages which have forced ministers to recruit heavily from abroad.

New rules on junior doctors hours came into force this month, limiting the length of their working week yet further.

Instead of spending time actually managing the treatment of patients, many doctors waste time hunting down test results, filling prescription forms and being "bleeped" to answer trivial questions.

It is clear that many of the tasks that doctors are currently doing at night are not appropriate Alastair Henderson, NHS Confederation

The survey involved three major hospitals in England, and followed every doctor during a nightshift to see exactly what they accomplished.

Out of a potential total of 2,035 hours of working time, doctors spent 57 hours being summoned by bleepers to incidents which did not require any intervention.

One doctor was bleeped 120 times in a single 12-hour shift.

Paper chase

Hours more were spent chasing paperwork - almost 20 hours looking for missing x-rays, 26 hours for lab results and 23 hours looking for medical notes.

Another 120 hours was spent writing out prescriptions - despite the fact that nurses could do this.

Dr Simon Eccles, who co-authored the research, said that a third of doctors' time was being spent "inappropriately".

"These results don't come as any surprise to us," he said.

"Time is being wasted on these tasks which could have been spent doing what doctors are trained to do - treating patients.

"If you spend 10 minutes chasing up an x-ray, that's 10 minute less to spend with the patient.

"We're not suggesting that we just dump this work on someone else - but we need to create teams of people to relieve this burden during the night."

Doctors' helpers

He said that he would like to see the introduction of US-style "physicians' assistants" who help doctors by completing much of their administrative work.

The body which represents NHS managers agreed that the survey results were shocking.

Alastair Henderson, Policy Manager at the NHS Confederation said: "It is clear that many of the tasks that doctors are currently doing at night are not appropriate and do not need to be done either by doctors, or at night, but certainly not by doctors at night.

"We need a fundamental look at the way that services are provided at night and this does mean challenging some long held views about the work of doctors.¿