That working time directive

One of the impacts of insisting that the working time directive is imposed upon the UK is going to be about medical training.

Laparoscopic surgery has been shown to reduce recovery time, hospital stays, infection rates and post-operative pain.

But the US study of 4,702 prostate cancer patients showed that it was harder to master than open surgery.

Surgeons had to perform around 750 keyhole operations before they achieved the same low level of disease recurrence as their traditional colleagues achieved after 250 procedures.

If you are, like most trainee surgeons, working a 60-70 hour week then you can get to your 750 operations target, the one where you are actually skilled and fully trained, a lot faster than you can if you´re forced into a chorter working week.

And it applies not just to prostate surgery of course, it applies to all. In the name of Europe we´re all to be operated on by half trained surgeons. Not quite what we want, eh?