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New deal shifts may increase house officers' stress

BMJ 1995; 311 doi: https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.311.7010.952c (Published 07 October 1995) Cite this as: BMJ 1995;311:952
  1. Caron Grainger,
  2. Eleanor Harries,
  3. Grant Ingrams
  1. Senior registrar in public health medicine Research fellow Institute of Public and Environmental Health, Department of Public Health and Epidemiology, Medical School, Birmingham B15 2TT
  2. Medical adviser West Midlands Regional Health Authority, Birmingham B16 9PA

    EDITOR,--The new deal was implemented to improve the working conditions of junior doctors by reducing the total hours worked and, where the intensity of work was high, by changing the pattern of working from a traditional on call rota to full or partial shifts.1 No research has been carried out, however, to assess whether the change from an on call rota to full or partial shifts in high intensity jobs has achieved the beneficial effect initially predicted.

    Two postal surveys of junior doctors were conducted in the west midlands, the first on all preregistration house officers trained in Britain who were working in the region and the second on a random sample of senior house officers working in the region. Both surveys …

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