One in three doctors in the NHS are so tired that their ability to treat patients is impaired, according to a report that reveals medics are more sleep deprived now than during the Covid-19 pandemic.
Longer hours, staff shortages and soaring demand for care on top of the backlog that worsened during the Covid crisis are causing extreme tiredness among doctors, leading to memory blanks, problems concentrating and patient harm.
More than one-third (35%) of doctors said they were so tired that their ability to treat patients was impaired, according to the survey conducted by the Medical Defence Union (MDU), which provides legal support to about 200,000 doctors, nurses, dentists and other healthcare workers across the UK.
A further third (34%) said their ability to practise medicine may have been impaired. Of the 69% who said extreme tiredness had or may have impaired their ability to treat patients, one in four (26%) said one of their patients had been harmed or a near miss had occurred as a result.
The findings of the study, published this week, suggests NHS medics are even more exhausted than they were three years ago.
When doctors last answered confidential questions about tiredness in February 2022, nearly one in 10 (9%) said they felt sleep deprived at work on a daily basis. Three years on, the proportion affected had more than doubled to one in five (22%).
The proportion of medics saying extreme tiredness had impaired their ability to treat patients was 26% in 2022 and 35% in 2025.
In 2022, more than one in six (17%) said sleep deprivation was affecting their technical abilities when caring for patients. In 2025, it was more than one in five (22%).
Dr Udvitha Nandasoma, the MDU’s head of advisory services, said the findings were deeply concerning. “There has been no letup in the immense pressures faced by healthcare professionals in the past three years and this is continuing to impact doctor’s mental health and affect patient care,” he said.
“When patients come to harm as a result of an impaired doctor, tiredness and fatigue are so common that they might not stand out as contributing factors and the focus can unfairly fall on the individual clinician. Nearly four in 10 doctors (38%) told us they were rarely or never able to take breaks during the working day, including lunch breaks. This is an unsustainable situation.
“If the government is to succeed in its 10-year health plan for the NHS, it needs staff to be firing on all cylinders so they can safely care for patients.”
The survey of about 500 doctors across the UK uncovered 69 patient safety near misses as a direct result of exhaustion. A further 17 cases involved NHS patients experiencing real harm.
This was an increase on 2022 when there were almost 40 near misses reported and seven cases where patients sustained harm, despite slightly more doctors being surveyed.
One doctor said extreme tiredness was causing them to frequently lose their train of thought. They had missed a small area of free air under the diaphragm on a patient’s chest X-ray, which led to a delayed diagnosis of a bowel perforation. “I don’t want to make excuses for myself, but I believe that had I not been sleep deprived, I wouldn’t have made this error,” they said.
Susannah Basile, the interim chief executive of the charity Doctors in Distress, said sleep-deprived medics struggled to provide the quality of care for patients that they wanted to.
“Doctors are leaving work exhausted and feeling insufficiently rested when they return, which can lead to burnout. Adequate rest breaks need to be both prioritised and respected,” she said. “This means not only enabling access to rest and sleep facilities at work but also ensuring rotas protect and respect non-working days to give staff sufficient time to reset before their next shift.”
The MDU wants ministers to do more to guarantee there are adequate resources to enable doctors to take regular breaks.
The government said doctors had been overworked for years and it had inherited an NHS with broken systems and infrastructure that were “only making their jobs harder”, so it was no surprise that many were feeling burnt out and demoralised.
A Department of Health and Social Care spokesperson added: “Through our investment and reforms, we are turning the NHS around, making it a great place to work so staff can provide top quality service for their patients. We will set out our plans to grow and support the NHS workforce when we publish our refreshed long-term workforce plan in summer.”
Source: theguardian.com
