1 in 12 doctors report difficulties on a daily basis providing sufficient care to patients
Statement by the Irish Hospital Consultants Association on the release of the Medical Council’s Workforce Intelligence Report 2025
One in 12 doctors (9%) have told the Medical Council that they experience difficulties providing patients with sufficient care at least once a day, with more than a quarter (28%) indicating such barriers are evident on a weekly basis.
The concerning findings are contained in the Medical Council’s ‘Medical Workforce Intelligence Report 2025’, released today (Monday, 31 August 2026).
The top five barriers to providing care most often cited by doctors include ‘pressure on workloads’, ‘time spent on bureaucracy/administration’, ‘overcrowding’, general ‘delays to providing care, treatment and screening’, and ‘lack of access to necessary equipment or services’, in that order. Issues around communication between health professionals, a lack of qualified staff, rota gaps and unsafe systems were also often referenced.
The Irish Hospital Consultants Association (IHCA) has expressed concern over the finding in the Workforce Report that 45% of specialists are consistently working more than 40 hours on average per week, in excess of their contractual hours. Close to one in five (18%) are working more than 48 hours a week, in contravention of the European Working Time Directive, with the situation even worse for NCHDs. Such long working hours are most prevalent in the specialties of surgery, obstetrics and gynaecology, and radiology.
Commenting on the report, IHCA President Prof Gabrielle Colleran said: “It is not surprising to learn that 1 in 12 doctors report experiencing difficulties at least once a day providing a patient with the sufficient level of care needed. This is the lived experience of so many of my specialist colleagues.
“While ‘pressure on workloads’ was the single most frequently quoted barrier, the fact that ‘time spent on bureaucracy/administration’ was a close second highlights yet again the need to accelerate the rollout of electronic health records across the health system as a matter of urgency. The current fragmented nature of our digital technology in the health service continues to impact directly on patient care, and the roll-out of the national EHR cannot come soon enough.
“The Association is particularly concerned with the finding that 41% of all doctors who report working more than 48 hours on average per week are spending more than 48 hours in direct patient care. This means these doctors are not only working excessive hours, but are doing so in intensely pressurised conditions, and are not being given adequate time by their employer to keep up with the necessary administrative tasks that are required to make the job both sustainable and safe for patients.
“The excessive weekly working hours also point to the fact that we simply do not have the required levels of workforce to shift severely scarce consultants from high-productivity Mondays to low-support Saturdays, when other members of the multi-disciplinary team are unavailable, without resulting in severe service gaps during the rest of the week and a devastating downstream impact on patient care.
“Such excessive workloads among medical professionals, as highlighted in the Medical Council’s report, needs to be addressed by Government once and for all, as both patients and the doctors that look after them are suffering.”
ENDS