Junior hospital doctors should come with a health warning attached because they are so exhausted, a health board member warned yesterday, after hearing that junior doctors in one Cork hospital were working 120 hours a week.
A Southern Health Board (SHB) member, Cllr Con O'Leary, warned that expecting junior doctors to work 120 hour weeks was not good for either the patients or the doctors while it also left the SHB open to legal action.
The SHB chairwoman, Dr Catherine Molloy, called on the board to reduce the 34 hours continuous on-call and 84-hour week that junior hospital doctors work in the SHB area.