Neurosurgical training under European law

Excerpt

With the European Working Time directive 2003/88/EC having been put into effect, all fields of surgery (including our own) have undergone significant paradigm shifts. This concerns not only the reduced career options we can offer to fine young people who are obliged to either reduce their expectations to have a potential career in (academic) neurosurgery as the result from hard work and from striving for excellence. It concerns our specialty as a whole, as such bright young people might no longer apply to our programs because they might rather choose a profession that places lesser constraints on their energy and on their ambitions than the medical field. The strict adherence to this Working Time Directive has turned our profession and the way we have to run our hospitals in accordance with the new law from a very special profession in a shift-like job like many others. Our trainees are obliged to work similar hours as school teachers, and this is not good for the spirit of our specialty. They are young and eager and resilient, and the same Working Time Directive, which is meant to protect the health of patients and of young doctors, is doing so at the expense of the current generation of seniors who have gone through thorough and unrestricted training—who are not protected by this directive—and who have to compensate themselves for the lack of continuity in patient care in their departments due to the inherent new shift-mentality. At the same time, our patients’ expectations are higher than ever, as they are bombarded with information via the Internet about all kinds of minimally invasive high-tech care for their neurosurgical problems. …