Thousands of junior doctors working past end of shift

New figures have shown that almost 36,000 trainee doctors in England have worked beyond their contracted hours more than 63,000 times since 2015.

The NHS figures, obtained by the Health Service Journal, show nearly 36,000 junior doctors have filed an ‘exception report’ since 2015 because of understaffed hospitals, with 63,309 exception reports over the last three years in total. Trainee medics were given the right to do this after their long-running contract dispute with the government a few years ago.

According to the data, Croydon Health Services NHS Trust received the most: an average of 8.5 times for each of the 205 junior doctors it employs. The trust was fined £25,320 for persistently allowing junior doctors to overwork, with trusts across the country fined in excess of £250,000 for breaching rules intended to stop trainees getting burned out.

Dr Andrew Goddard, the president of the Royal College of Physicians, said: “Exception reports are there for a reason – to protect doctor and patient – but it is also crucial that we don’t expect ever more of hard-pressed staff, otherwise we will contribute to their burnout and ultimately create a much bigger problem for the NHS.”