Ms Susan Clyne:

In terms of the number of doctors who have been affected, of the total number of infected cases in healthcare, doctors account for about 5%. The real problem is that there is no resilience in the workforce, so when someone goes out sick, there is nobody to take on. For both doctors and nurses, therefore, it means that the people who are left are working twice or three times as hard with more shifts and longer hours. We see that, for our non-consultant hospital doctors, working 24-hour shifts is becoming much more prevalent in the system. They are working over and above their safe working hours in terms of the European working time directive, so there is no resilience in the health service workforce across all the grades.