§ Mr. Home RobertsonTo ask the Secretary of State for Health what are the average and maximum weekly number of hours on duty and on call for junior hospital doctors. [17384]
§ Mr. MaloneJunior hospital doctors contract to work a standard week of 40 hours. The majority of them also contract for a number of additional duty hours, which may vary from contract to contract.
The maximum weekly hours of duty including additional duty hours are laid down in "The New Deal", copies of which are available in the Library. Since 1 January, these are 56 hours for those on full shifts, 64 hours for those working partial shifts, 72 hours for those in hard-pressed on-call posts and 83 hours for those in non-hard-pressed on-call posts. Maximum average hours of work are, regardless of the contracted working pattern, 56 a week.
935WThe medical and dental work-force census for England and Wales shows that at 30 September 1993, the average contracted hours of full-time junior doctors and dentists who contract for additional duty hours was 75.2 a week.
Average hours of work, as opposed to contracted hours, are not held centrally. However, the 23rd report of the Review Body on Doctors and Dentists Remuneration, copies of which are available in the Library, contained the results of an independent survey of junior doctors and dentists in Great Britain which show that average hours of work were, in October 1993, 53.4 a week.