The role of doctors in Ireland is being systematically undervalued, the Irish Medical Organisation (IMO) has claimed.

According to IMO president, Dr Peadar Gilligan, the medical profession is ‘under attack' and this has led to a major shortage of doctors in key positions nationwide.

He told the IMO's annual general meeting in Killarney at the weekend that the agreed contracts of practicing doctors are continually ignored, and many have to tolerate different pay rates as similarly qualified doctors doing the same job.

He also said that there have been unreasonable delays in restoring cuts imposed during the economic crisis compared to other professional groups.

"The fact that new contracts need to be negotiated for general practitioners, non-consultant hospital doctors, consultants and public health specialists is indicative of the fact that doctors in Ireland currently do not feel valued," he noted.

He insisted that all of these issues have led to an unprecedented shortage of doctors in key posts. Currently in Ireland, there are 400 unfilled consultant posts nationally, GMS lists without a GP and ‘more resignations from the public hospital system than ever before in the history of the State'.

Dr Gilligan, who is a consultant in emergency medicine in Dublin's Beaumont Hospital, also described the practise of leaving patients in Emergency Departments (EDs) on trolleys and chairs as ‘an absolute outrage'.

This kind of overcrowding ‘costs lives and must stop', he said.

He called for the introduction of a six-hour standard between the time a patient arrives in an ED and the time they are admitted or discharged.

The current average waiting time in EDs in Dublin is 14 hours.

"Such a (six-hour) standard of care requires that hospitals have adequate capacity in terms of beds, staffing, diagnostics, theatre time, and timely discharge of hospitalised patients to rehabilitation services, convalescence, nursing homes or assisted home care," Dr Gilligan noted.