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Working hours of junior doctors' has been reduced in order to increase their efficiency in UK. //

A study which enquired 1,400 medics found that cutting down working hours alone is not enough to reduce exhaustion and that change in the design of rotas was essential.

The Occupational and Environmental Medicine journal study was conducted by researchers at Massey and Auckland universities in New Zealand.

In the UK, junior doctors will have to work only 48 hours instead of the prevailing 58 under the European Working Time Directive which will come into force by 2009.

The doctors who were questioned reported working between 40 to over 70 hours a week.

Dr Masood Ahmed, of the British Medical Association said that the NHS must recognize the importance of enough rest for doctors and keep them in view while designing rotas.

The study marked ten aspects of work patterns and sleep which were used to arrive at a fatigue risk score for each participant.

Nearly 30% of respondents were marked "excessively sleepy" during work.

25 % of them said that they had fallen asleep while driving their car home from work.

Two thirds admitted committing mistakes due to fatigue at some point during work. For four out of 10 of them, this had happened during the past six months.

The study found that sleepiness and errors occurred more because of night shifts and unplanned changes in rosters than the total number of hours worked.

For instance, while working long hours did cause sleepiness, it did not make one sleepy at the wheel or lead to a fatigue-related error.

Dr Phillip Gander, of Massey University's Sleep Research Centre, said: "We conclude that long work hours are not the only aspect of work patterns that needs to be managed to reduce sleepiness and fatigue-related clinical errors among junior doctors.

"The findings support the view th
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