Norbert Jaeger was a junior doctor in the surgical department of a hospital in Kiel. His on-call duty followed his normal shift. He had to stay in the hospital, where he was given a room with a bed and could sleep when he was not needed. On 9 September 2003 the European Court of Justice ruled in his case that such on-call duty counts in full as working time. In Germany, the dental journal zm reported that 30-hour duty shifts were now a thing of the past. The German Hospital Federation expected to need 27,000 new hires.