BMJ  2005;331:515 (3 September), doi:10.1136/bmj.331.7515.515-a

Letter

Junior doctors' shifts and sleep deprivation

Please make on-call rooms available to doctors at night

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

EDITOR—The editorial by Murray et al reassured me that senior members of the Royal College of Physicians have concerns for and appreciate junior doctors' hard work.1 2

I recently worked nights as a medical registrar at a university hospital in this region and was shocked to see the notice on the door to the on-call rooms, saying that on-call rooms are not provided any more. I had to review every patient seen by the senior house officer and house officer on the medical admissions unit and authorise and endorse transfer of some of these patients to outlier wards (owing to bed crises), therefore taking responsibility for the transfer as well. I also had to drive more than a mile in between outlier wards, at least thrice to the emergency admissions unit, to attend to ill patients and also see the referrals from other specialties. All this was happening amid . . . [Full text of this article]

George I Varughese, research fellow

ASCOT Centre, Department of Medicine, University of Birmingham, Birmingham B18 7QH georgeiv@doctors.org.uk


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Relevant Article

Junior doctors' shifts and sleep deprivation
Alice Murray, Roy Pounder, Hugh Mather, and Carol Black
BMJ 2005 330: 1404. [Extract] [Full Text] [PDF]

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