Consultants and hospital doctors will not be physically able to carry the workload of striking nurses for more than three or four days, their representative bodies warned last night.
And with hospitals advising non-urgent cases to stay away, many GPs are considering extending their opening hours to cope with an expected surge in patient numbers of up to 40 per cent, according to the Irish Medical Organisation (IMO).
The workload of all three doctors' groups will be greatly increased from today as the number of nursing staff is reduced to between a third and a quarter of normal and many hospital wards are closed.
The State's 2,500 hospital doctors, formerly called junior doctors, already work between 50 and 140 hours a week. They will be taking over nurses' duties such as taking blood, administering injection and intravenous drips, monitoring patients and answering phone calls.
"They will be trying to put their fingers in dikes all over the place," said Dr Mick Molloy, the chairman of the IMO's hospital doctor committee. "Hospital doctors are now going to be jumping into the breach to try to cover the work of 28,000 nurses . . . If the strike goes on for more than three or four days, it wouldn't be physically possible for hospital doctors to do all their duties."
The Irish Hospital Consultants' Association has advised its 1,200 members not to work to the point of exhaustion where their clinical judgment could be compromised.
Consultants will work in conjunction with hospital strike committees on a 24-hour basis and it will be their responsibility to decide what is an emergency case.
The association's spokesman, Mr Finbarr Fitzpatrick, said he was "quite concerned that, at the end of three days, the strike will be physically getting the better of people".
The association has circulated guidelines to its members advising them to let hospital management know in writing about "every shortage of resources and facilities for the treatment of patients".
The IMO's general practitioner spokesman, Dr Cormac Macnamara, said its 2,500 members have been advised to keep a close eye on patient lists to ensure that levels of services provided by nurses are maintained as far as possible. Some doctors will be under "great pressure" to fill gaps in services normally carried out by nurses, at a time when many practices are already busy with autumn respiratory illnesses and other infections.
Dr Macnamara said one GP in a provincial town was handed a list yesterday by a public health nurse of 30 patients who need to have regular injections and wound dressings. Many GPs will also have to look after psychiatric outpatients, as well as the terminally ill and elderly.
In Dublin, many GPs will have to deal with referrals by maternity hospitals for routine ante-natal and post-natal visits, besides conducting blood tests normally referred to hospital out-patient clinics, most of which are now closed.
Dr Macnamara said GPs' referrals to hospital emergency departments and consultants would continue as normal. The workload of GPs in Dublin is expected to increase by 10 to 20 per cent, with increases of between 30 and 40 per cent in some rural areas, said Dr Macnamara.