A coroner has issued a warning after an "exhausted" NHS consultant died from a drug and alcohol overdose following his ninth consecutive 13-hour night shift, raising concerns about doctors' cumulative workloads across NHS and private employers. Dr Naeem Ahmed, a 50-year-old consultant in anaesthesia and pain medicine, was found dead in an on-call room at Poole Hospital in Dorset in June 2025, prompting Dorset senior coroner Rachael Griffin to highlight that no legal requirement exists for doctors to disclose their private work patterns to NHS trusts, or vice versa, meaning hospitals cannot track staff's total working hours.

Dr Ahmed was discovered slumped in a chair with two syringes and a half-empty whiskey bottle nearby, having taken fentanyl alongside alcohol at roughly half the drink-drive limit; the coroner recorded a conclusion of misadventure. He had just completed the ninth night in an 11-shift run for University Hospital Dorset, while also juggling daytime work for other providers and a private practice, and his wife said the punishing schedule was "definitely starting to get to him". Griffin's Prevention of Future Deaths report, sent to the health minister and NHS England's chief executive, warns that trusts' job-planning and rostering systems fail to account for doctors' combined workload across multiple employers, risking fatigue-related harm to patients and staff nationwide.