EJD - European Junior Doctors Association

29/09/2026

Safe working hours protect doctors and patients.

On 19 September, our VP represented EJD at the WMA Junior Doctors Network (JDN) webinar "Working Hours as a Patient Safety Tool: From Altruism to Safe Care", which continued the launch of the JDN's Global Working Hours Study.

From our REST-JD study of 6,165 junior doctors in 26 countries:
🔹 57 hours: the average working week (EU legal limit: 48)
🔹 71% work more than 48 hours a week
🔹 62% work 24-hour shifts
🔹 88% work overtime, and 69% of them get no pay or time off for it

Shifts of 24 hours or more, and weeks above 50 hours, are linked to more serious medical errors. Long hours harm doctors too: in WHO/Europe's MeND survey, depression symptoms among doctors and nurses rise from 25% at 31–40 hours a week to 40% above 70.

A question from the audience asked why working conditions get attention mainly through patient safety, not as rights and dignity. Our view: both. Safe working hours are a right, already in European law, and a condition for safe care.

But the law is not enforced: 17 of the 19 countries in REST-JD are above the 48-hour limit. Junior doctors should not carry the responsibility for enforcing the limits alone.

🌍 National, then European, now global. REST-JD grew out of a national study of residents in Spain, and JDN Chair Pablo Estrella-Porter co-authored both. EJD fully supports the Global Working Hours Study.

Thank you to the JDN, Shiv Joshi and Pablo Estrella-Porter for the invitation and for leading this work.

📄 REST-JD report in our bio!

24/09/2026

The MeND study is now published in The Lancet Regional Health - Europe 🎉 Open access - link in bio.

It draws on WHO/Europe's Mental Health of Nurses and Doctors (MeND) study, funded by the European Commission: 90,171 doctors and nurses in the 27 EU countries, Iceland and Norway, surveyed between October 2024 and April 2025.

This is the work of the WHO Regional Office for Europe teams and the WHO Collaborating Centre in Madrid, and they walked the long road from first idea to publication all the way.
The whole junior doctors' community in Europe is grateful that WHO/Europe took this study on and wanted the professions at the table from the very beginning 👏

EJD stood on that road with our partners from the first step to the last, alongside CPME, UEMS, UEMO, EFN and EFNMA: helping to design the study, disseminating the survey, working through the results, and carrying them further to events and stakeholders across the WHO European Region.
Thank you to our member organisations for carrying the survey to doctors in their countries and now bringing the results home.

We are enormously grateful that we could be part of this - and honoured that our President, Alvaro Cerame, is one of the authors, representing EJD.

What the article shows:
🔸 30% of respondents had depressive symptoms, 23% probable anxiety, 13% suicidal thoughts
🔸 28% of doctors worked more than 50 hours a week; 35% of doctors and 39% of nurses worked frequent night shifts
🔸 10% of doctors and 18% of nurses reported physical violence
🔸 adverse working conditions were strongly associated with poor mental health; job resources and organisational support with better outcomes

To everyone, especially those responsible for doctors and nurses in their own countries: use the article and the MeND report. Share the results, collect feedback, look at the risk and protective factors - and act on them, to improve the working conditions and mental health of doctors and nurses, and to make the future of healthcare stable, sustainable and healthy itself.

The article's last words: it is time to act. We could not agree more.

22/09/2026

Last week in Brussels 🇧🇪 EJD joined the WHO Regional Office for Europe Regional Policy Dialogue on health workforce retention and well-being in the Eastern Partnership countries - Armenia 🇦🇲, Azerbaijan 🇦🇿, Georgia 🇬🇪, Moldova 🇲🇩 and Ukraine 🇺🇦.

Our Vice-President Miglė Trumpickaitė presented "One Loop: MeND, REST-JD and Civil Society" and co-moderated Day 2, "From Evidence to Implementation", with Georgina Grundy-Campbell (WHO/Europe).

Two studies, one direction:
🔹 MeND (WHO/Europe, 2025): 90,171 nurses and doctors, 29 countries. Among resident doctors, 37.6% with depression symptoms and 33.3% with anxiety symptoms. Working hours and rest are among the biggest drivers of mental-health deterioration.
🔹 REST-JD (EJD, 2025): 6,165 junior doctors, 26 countries. A 57-hour average week, 71% above the 48-hour EWTD limit, only 1 in 4 satisfied with their work–life balance.

MeND flags the problem. EJD builds the case. Reform sets the rules. Outcomes feed back. Civil society can push the reform forward - or stall it, if not informed or not aligned.

On Day 2 the five country groups turned the evidence into concrete actions for their own systems, with EJD-WHO Academy pathways from Spain, Lithuania, Romania, Norway and Finland as examples.

Thank you to WHO/Europe and to all five delegations 🙏

20/09/2026

EJD at the student session of the AMSE 2026 conference. Vilnius, 12 September. Our first glimpse of an AMSE conference!

The session: "Healthcare in Regional Areas or Major Cities: What's Your Future Path?" The idea came from the shortage of doctors in Lithuania's regions.

Students and educators in mixed groups. Four tables: professional growth, mandate or incentive, solution models, responsibility.

Our VP Miglė Trumpickaitė co-moderated the discussions and gave the closing remarks on behalf of EJD. Our position in one sentence: a country needs doctors who choose to stay, not doctors assigned for a fixed term.

Thank you to AMSE for the invitation, and credit to the AMSE leadership for giving students and junior doctors a place in the conference programme. Thank you to the students' section for a perfectly organised workshop, where topics that matter to students were discussed by different generations together, alongside leaders of medical schools and medical educators from across the European region.

AMSE is our partner in the European Medical Organisations (EMOs), the network of the main European bodies representing the medical profession.

17/09/2026

15/09/2026

EJD in Kyiv: "From mandate to motivation"

On 10 September, EJD Vice-President Dr Miglė Trumpickaitė spoke at the International Rescue Committee conference "Rural Health in Wartime" on why allocating junior doctors will not staff rural health - and what will.

Involuntary workforce allocation has been tried across Europe. In Latvia, junior doctors cite the service bond as a reason to emigrate. In Slovenia, doctors leave despite fines. Allocation meant to relieve a shortage can aggravate it.

The doctors being allocated already work 57 hours a week on average. 71% are above the 48-hour EWTD limit. 38% of resident doctors report symptoms of depression. Allocation does not add capacity.

Lithuania is the live case: its June 2026 residency reform ties state-funded residency to five years of service in designated regions, with repayment penalties. EJD and the Lithuanian Junior Doctors Association oppose it.

What works, and is already in use in EJD member countries: sponsored study places, supervised rural training, choice of training site, financial incentives, contracts and conditions, mentorship and career pathways.

Rural health is staffed by doctors who choose to stay, not doctors assigned for a fixed term.

Thank you to Marko Isajlovic and the International Rescue Committee for the invitation.

You'll find reports From Mandate to Motivation, REST-JD, MeND on our website and in our bio!

07/09/2026

Friday in Brussels: EJD at the regular meeting of the European Medical Organisations (EMOs).

The EMOs bring together the main European bodies representing the medical profession – .europeandoctors , UEMS, AEMH, European Union of General Practitioners (UEMO) , European Federation of Salaried Doctors (Fems) , CEOM, EMSA and AMSE – with EJD as the voice of junior doctors.

Over decades this platform has become the space where the profession coordinates across borders: comparing notes on where things stand, aligning positions where we can, and working through what is shaping medical practice in Europe right now:
- recent EU policy developments
- recognition of Family Medicine as a specialty
- sustainable working conditions for doctors in training
- the growing concern over violence against doctors

Junior doctors face many of these issues first and most acutely.

Having a seat at this table means our perspective is part of the conversation from the start, not added afterwards.

30/08/2026

✨ Two days in Riga, and a board that knows exactly what it's building. ✨

On 28-29 August the EJD Executive Board met in Riga to turn Strategy 2026–2031 from a document into a workplan. The General Assembly adopted it unanimously in April, in Bad Nauheim, where EJD was founded 50 years ago. Riga was about delivery.

We focused on safer working conditions - psychosocial risks, violence and harassment against junior doctors, mental health; on better training - postgraduate training mapping across Europe; and on a digital future junior doctors help shape rather than simply absorb.

A warm welcome to our new Treasurer, Olli 👏 - first in-person board meeting, sharp questions, clear head for numbers.

It all comes back to one vision: junior doctors across Europe work and train in safe, fair and sustainable conditions.

Huge thanks to Anna Klesmite Bluma for hosting us so smoothly, and to every board member who came ready to work. Solidarity, equity, diversity, integrity - not slogans, but how these two days actually felt.

🔶 Dear delegates: on 10 September we're bringing you a virtual EJD–WHO Academy on engaging in health and care policy dialogue. Watch your mailboxes! 🔶

🥳 Next stop for the General Assembly: Ljubljana, 6-7 November 🥳

12/07/2026

This spring, EJD turned 50 - and we didn't spend it only looking back.

In Bad Nauheim, our members marked the milestone and unanimously adopted our strategy for the next five years. Fifty years in, the work continues: better training, safer conditions, a stronger collective voice.

To everyone who sat at this table before us - thank you. We're not done.

Full strategy + our 50-year history and more → check out our website!

10/07/2026

🇱🇹 A new law in Lithuania ties state-funded residency places to a five-year work obligation in under-served regions, with repayment penalties if doctors don't comply. It takes effect January 2027.
EJD, representing over 300,000 junior doctors across Europe, stands with our colleagues at JGA in opposing this measure.
Calling it "voluntary" doesn't hold up. When access to specialist training itself carries a five-year obligation and a financial penalty, that's not a free choice, it's a decision made under real pressure.
And Lithuania's problem isn't a shortage of doctors. OECD data show the country has more doctors per capita than the OECD average. The real issue is where they end up working, and our own research shows that forcing the answer only pushes more doctors out of the profession.
What actually works: better pay and working conditions, real regional training, mentorship, housing support. Not compulsion.
Full statement, link in bio.