State-Employed Psychiatrists Take Workload Case To Rowland

By ELIZABETH HAMILTON

May 31, 2000

HARTFORD, Connecticut (UPS) -- It's happened more times than Dr. Jose Tellechea can count. He arrives at his job as a psychiatrist at Connecticut Valley Hospital at 8:30 a.m. only to find there is no one to work the overnight shift.

So Tellechea does what many other state-employed psychiatrists are doing these days. He works his regular shift at the Middletown hospital, stays for the 16-hour night shift and is back at his job the next morning without a break.

It's 32 straight hours of stressful work. Such prolonged shifts are taking their toll on doctors and jeopardizing patients, Tellechea and other psychiatrists say.

Tuesday, doctors employed by the Department of Mental Health and Addiction Services took their cause to Gov. John G. Rowland and asked him to intervene.

The state, they said, should either hire more physicians to cover the overnight shifts or raise the pay of on-call work so the state can compete with the private sector.

``This is dangerous from a patient care perspective,'' said Dr. Todd Alford, president of the medical staff at Connecticut Valley Hospital.

Alford said doctors who are deprived of sleep are bound to make mistakes.

Rowland was not present for the mid-day visit to his office, so the group left behind a letter signed by 55 doctors who work at CVH, the Greater Bridgeport Mental Health Authority, Blue Hills and Cedarcrest Hospital.

Wayne Dailey, a Department of Mental Health and Addiction Services spokesman, said forced overtime is allowed under the doctors' contract. The union and the state are scheduled to begin negotiating a new contract early next year, he said, and the issue will be addressed then.

In the interim, Dailey said, the state is taking steps to ease the problem. He declined to say what those steps are.

Psychiatrists say the state has a difficult time finding residents to take the overnight shifts because it pays them $27 an hour when they can make $40 to $60 an hour in the private sector for the same work.

Garrell Mullaney, chief executive officer at CVH, said no one at his facility is mandated to work overtime more than once a week but some do anyway out of a sense of responsibility to the patients.

The hospital must staff three doctors every night, he said, and has difficulty finding residents willing to work those shifts.

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