This story was first published in digitalhealth.net
Junior doctors having accidents due to night shifts
A new report has revealed that more than half of sleep deprived doctors have suffered a road accident or near miss while driving home after work.
A study in the journal Anaesthesia, endorsed by the Association of Anaesthetists of Great Britain and Ireland (AAGBI), has highlighted how exhausting night shifts have left hospital trainees involved in, or close to, a road incident whilst driving home. Because of this, 84 per cent of respondents reported feeling too tired to drive home after a night shift, with 90 per cent using caffeine-based drinks in order to stay awake on a night shift.
Furthermore, 72 per cent said that work-related fatigue had negatively affected their physical health, 69 per cent claimed it had damaged their psychological well-being, while 53 per cent of the trainee anaesthetists said fatigue had impaired their ability to do their job.
A typical night shift lasts for 12 and a half hours, but 17 per cent of medics said they never managed a sleep of at least 30 minutes during that time.
Dr Laura McClelland, a co-author of the survey, said: “These are very worrying findings. Junior doctors are putting their lives at risk due to fatigue resulting from their shift work and the lack of rest facilities at their hospitals both during and after shifts. It may lead people to believe that they are able to drive when they aren’t or to misjudge a clinical situation. We’re required to make judgements about everything from the clinical presentation of a patient to the drug doses we use and also the appropriate course of the clinical care. Fatigue can lead to anything going wrong in any of those processes.”
A Department of Health spokeswoman said: “We know how hard our junior doctors work to provide world-leading care and it is absolutely vital they get proper support. And that’s why their new contract has much stricter safeguards in mandating rest days after consecutive night shifts and reducing the maximum hours worked in any one week.”
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