Are overscheduled doctors putting themselves and patients at risk?

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By Erin Dean

There is no external oversight of workload when doctors juggle roles across multiple employers. A consultant’s recent death shows just how much is at stake.

It was the morning after his ninth night shift in a row when Dr Naeem Ahmed was found unresponsive in a chair in an on-call room.

The consultant anaesthetist died in June from alcohol and fentanyl toxicity after working intense hours in the weeks before.

The coroner pointed to the relentless schedule and lack of oversight of his total workload as contributing factors

Rachael Clare Griffin, senior coroner for Dorset, noted that Ahmed had done clinical work for more than one employer on the same day several times that month – including daytime shifts for an external provider before taking on an overnight shift for an NHS trust.

Part of the reason Ahmed had been working such intense, compressed hours was to make time to care for his parents in Pakistan, his wife said at the inquest hearing, adding that her “kind and patient” husband was “exhausted mentally and physically” in the months before his death.