Exhausted doctors

SIR – Perhaps Sir Terence English (Letters, October 2) remembers his medical training through rose-tinted spectacles. As a biomedical scientist I also worked exhausting hours, but fewer than the junior doctors for whom I provided pathology test results.

I invariably found them even more tired than I, and frequently requiring guidance in the interpretation of even the simplest of results. Like mine, their receptiveness to training in these circumstances must have been highly suspect.

The European Working Time Directive was certainly my saviour.

Woodsetts, South Yorkshire