A Junior Doctor has described making a decision to sleep rather than get something to eat, while working a 30-hour shift.

Doctor Libby Ennis, a second year Senior House Officer undergoing her training at Beaumont Hospital in Dublin, described the incident in a radio diary for Newstalk Breakfast.

Junior doctors should only work 48 hours a week, but many, like Dr. Ennis, work over 100.

This month, the IMO will ballot their 2,000 junior doctors on industrial action as part of their Enough is Enough campaign against excessive working hours.

Over the Bank Holiday weekend, Dr. Ennis went to work at 7am on Friday and finished at 11am on Saturday, before coming back in at 08.30sm on Sunday and working until 10.30am yesterday.

In this excerpt, she describes choosing sleep over food:

In her radio diary for Newstalk Breakfast, Dr Ennis describes making a mistake in her documentation after a recent long shift.

She says the outcome is inconvenient for everyone, "I can't print bloods for blood transfusion blood samples because last week I made a mistake on a form, post call. I had taken a blood sample from someone we were admitting to theatre the next day, because obviously you want to have blood on standby in case we need to give them a blood transfusion.

"It's a very particular form, you have to be very careful, because obviously you want the right blood goiing to the right person. I was probably about 30 hours into a shift and I used the wrong sticker for the wrong form - they're obviously very particular about those forms...until I've done a particular course online I can't print those stickers [again]...I said the main reason I had made that mistake was because I was incredibly tired, but this is what every single doctor in the hospital has to do, so they weren't taking that as an excuse."

Libby managed to get almost two hours sleep, however she was disturbed during that time as she had to respond to her bleeper every-time it went off:

Listen to Dr. Ennis' full diary and interview with Newstalk's Breakfast: