Patient safety is at risk because of understaffing, warn junior doctors

PATIENT safety at London hospitals could be at risk as exhausted junior doctors cover gaps in shifts at cashstrapped and understaffed NHS trusts, it was claimed today.

In a new report, junior doctors told of “high stress, tiredness, and struggling to cope” exacerbated by the “constant pressure to take on more shifts”.

The independent study, entitled “Mind the Rota Gap”, was collated from responses of 395 juniors, including 111 who work for London trusts, in areas including A&E, acute medicine, surgery, paediatrics and psychiatry.

In the capital, three quarters of respondents said their rota gaps were not being covered in a “sustainable” way — with, in many c ases, expensive agency locum doctors being brought in, or colleagues having to do extra on top of their workload.

Sixteen per cent of rota gaps were not being covered in any capacity. Nearly a third of those who reported a hole in the rota said they lacked four or more doctors.

Dr Dagan Lonsdale, an intensive care and clinical pharmacology specialist who helped collate the data, said there were supposed to be 32 general medicine registrars working at his south London hospital last month, but only 28 were doing shifts. He said: “It’s not unusual for me to come on to a shift and be told there’s doctors missing and not enough locums to go around. You just get on and do your best but you’re covering two or three people’s jobs.

“You prioritise the emergencies and urgent care, and some of the more routine things might not get done. There’s the potential for risk to patients because doctors are either over-working or agency staff are being used. Conditions are becoming unbearable for some.”

Tooting Labour MP Rosena AllinKhan, a former A&E doctor, supports the report and has gathered 2,500 signatures urging Theresa May to halt NHS cuts. “The Government is attempting to create a seven-day NHS with an overstretched five-day team,” she said.

“If you are over-tired, as a doctor it’s so much more easy to make mistakes. In medicine, we do what we call the ‘my mum test’ — would this be good enough for my mum? — and so often it’s not.”

The Department of Health said: “We have invested in the frontline and there are already more than 25,000 extra clinical staff, including almost 8,800 more doctors and almost 11,300 more nurses on our wards since May 2010.” An NHS Employers spokeswoman said: “We are redesigning rotas together with deploying a mix of skills to support the medical team.”

Junior doctors are reported to be considering holding five-day strikes once a month for the rest of the year over their new di sputed contrac t , which ends higher rates of pay for weekend work. The British Medical Association’s committee of junior doctors was due to put the idea to a vote today, according to a leaked document. The BMA said: “No decisions have been made.”