AT LEAST four in 10 junior doctors have fallen asleep while driving home from a long night shift, according to research for a BBC documentary airing tonight.

Out of 1,100 newly qualified doctors surveyed, 41 per cent of them said they had nodded off at the wheel.

Dr Sam Jayaweera from Oxford said she often works four 13-hour night shifts in a row and admitted that she had fallen asleep on her way home once and drove on the wrong side of the road. Luckily, there were no other vehicles around.

She told the BBC: “Only last year I was going to a night shift and I came across a car that (had) flipped in the road, it was an unlit country road and … it was another junior doctor coming back from their late shift.”

The Inside Out programme details how 23-year-old Lauren Connelly died after her first night shift.

Her father Brian — whose campaign brought about a reduction in the permitted number of consecutive night shifts in Scotland from seven to five — told the makers how he and his wife had set out to look for Lauren, learning of her accident only when they arrived at the crash scene.

In another case, 33-year-old Dr Ronak Patel from Gosport died when his car hit a lorry when he was heading home to his pregnant wife after his third night shift in a row. According to evidence at the inquest, it was likely that he had fallen asleep.

Dr Michael Farquhar, who teaches junior doctors about the benefits of rest, said that nurses and doctors must take breaks when they work at night — it was not a “sign of weakness” to do so.

Inside Out is on BBC1 South at 7.30pm.