Letter: Doctors' unreal world

Sir: N. R. Hulton (Letters, 5 May) is quite correct about the problem of financing reform of junior doctors' hours. Essentially, a hospital day lasts 24 hours 365 days a year, and in many specialties a junior may be equally busy at 3am as at 3pm.

When I was a junior doctor, it always seemed obvious that in order for us to return to the real world with an eight-hour day, the Government would have to shell out for three times as many doctors. It didn't seem very likely then, either.

Yours faithfully,

SARAH MURRAY

Dousland,

Devon