Dr. John-Paul Byrne:

The Deputy made an interesting point about breaking the cycle of understaffing, heavy workloads and high emigration, which leads to heavier workloads and further understaffing. We discussed that in one of our papers. It is almost like a closed loop of deterioration. We need to break that loop through heavy investment in all sorts of resources in the health system. We need to invest in staffing and physical and information infrastructures, ICT systems. Many doctors have talked to us about the frustrations they face in chasing information. It takes up a lot of their time and leaves them pressed for time, which results in work-life balance issues. It is a big problem. There is scope for investment. A range of resources is required, some of which might be expensive, but some of which is not. I am thinking of things such as canteens being open after 4 p.m. Doctors do not have access to hot food on a Saturday and yet are being asked to work for 18 hours. Those seem like simple fixes. There are, of course, also more complicated problems. We need a more holistic approach to what a resourced work environment looks like for hospital doctors.