This is the fifth home visit, and on-call duty doesn't finish for eight more hours.

A hospital can legally exempt senior members of the medical staff from on-call duty, it says.

Specialists are not accepting on-call duties as frequently as we would like.

This led to a nationwide change in the scheduling of on-call duty from every other night to every third night.

Finally, the ruling by the European Court of Justice in respect of on-call duty must be adhered to.

Female police officers were initially given six-day, 48-hour work weeks, and were not allowed to work night shifts apart from when on-call duties until 1973.

There were three American generals and one Canadian general who shared the on-call duty at NORAD.

They all participate in an on-call Duty Officer rota covering nights and weekends to deal with any emergencies while the Bursar's Office is closed.

Just then Ringer, going into his 24th hour of on-call duty and clutching a tall cup of coffee as if he might drop to the floor without it, approached the group.

These staff members are "live-in" (required to live in the residence hall, often in a larger or otherwise extraordinary space) or live-on to fulfill their frequent on-call duties.

In addition, the rule says, doctors can have simultaneous on-call duties at two or more hospitals and can schedule elective surgery or other medical procedures when they are on call.

Gary Carter, the chief executive of the association, said that although most services were being maintained, some New Jersey hospitals say specialists are balking at taking on-call duties in emergency rooms.

Although Parliament describes stand-by time (on-call duty) as working time, the inactive part of stand-by time can be calculated in a ‘specific way’ (via a collective agreement or statutory arrangement), without there being guarantees for the workers involved.

This study listed issues needing urgent resolution and I will list these briefly - excessive hours worked in several EU countries, on-call duties, - we by the way have problems in Ireland about the definition of on-call.

In my view, the solution presented in the Cercas report is an excellent one, treating periods of on-call duty as working time, in accordance with the Court judgments, while proposing that we allow the stand-by and rest times to be calculated differently by collective agreement.

Thirdly, as for subsidiarity, at the moment, we are leaving it up to the Member States to decide whether stand-by or rest time during on-call duty must be paid and, if so, how much, and whether allowance is made for them, and, if so, to what extent.

At the University of Chicago's Pritzker School of Medicine, policies enacted last year require that third-year students' on-call duties end at midnight, so they have time to do patient write-ups, discuss their observations with residents and still get home to study and sleep before morning rounds.

According to the VVD delegation, the fact that Europe prescribes that the total on-call duty, including stand-by and rest times, should be considered working time, is an example of interference from Brussels which will only lose Europe even more support, at the very time when it needs even more of it.

I should like to remind the House of the dispute on the recognition of on-call duty as working time that is still ongoing, and of the strike by German hospital staff that has been going on for weeks and is paralysing many hospitals in Germany and thus also seriously impairing care for the people.