Medical residents protested their long working hours in front of the Knesset, as the Labor, Welfare and Health Committee discussed possible solutions for the issue on Wednesday. 'We're doing much more than six rotations in a month and none of us succeeds in getting two hours of sleep during our rotations,' said Dr. Ray Biton, chairman of the Residents Organization. 'I can count on one hand the number of times that I've slept an hour. I'm busy reviving and doing other difficult things even at the 24th hour and this isn't the quality of care I would want to provide to my patients.' Biton stressed that the residents' health is also being impacted and called on the government to hire more residents in order to split the work into more shifts and lower the working time for residents. 'We don't need a committee or to talk, for every four residents we need to add one shift and that's it,' said MK Haim Katz, chairman of the committee. 'It's that simple. Half a year of discussions is too much, 30 people is too much. This is not how you make decisions.' Health Minister Yuli Edelstein reaffirmed that he was committed to finding a solution for the issue, but emphasized that he was not committing to accept the specific recommendations of the committee. Edelstein added that he would accept the conclusions of the committee and 'consider them seriously' while making sure that there is no compromise on the quality of the residency and that there is a demand to shorten the on-call hours for residents. Medical residents in Israel have long argued that they work unreasonably long hours and that the healthcare they provide is impacted negatively because of the long working hours.
