What are the SiMAP and Jaeger judgments?
Answer The SiMAP and Jaeger cases were brought before the European Court of Justice (ECJ) by a Spanish medical union and a German doctor. In both cases, the ECJ ruled that on-call time, when a doctor is obliged to be resident in a hospital or health centre, counts as working time. (For example, a doctor resident on-call but asleep is counted as working). In Jaeger, the ECJ also ruled that compensatory rest for missed rest must be taken immediately after the end of the working period, rather than aggregated and taken at a later time. Although the judgments applied to particular cases, the assumption has to be that the same interpretations would apply to any UK doctors working similar patterns.
