Sixty years ago, young doctors were expected to devote themselves single-mindedly to their patients.

Now the regime common at the health service's inception has given way to a European Union-mandated 48-hour week.

But the women's recollections suggest that patients were safer at night - and doctors better trained and supported - in the National Health Service's earlier days than they are now.

"When I was a houseman [the most junior rank of hospital doctor], we didn't get any time off," Dame Margaret says. "I had one night off in six months. I was on 24 hours a day for six months, bar one night. And one of my favourite patients died on that night."

But she insists: "It wasn't that stress making. We had a very small number of patients. They were in for two or three weeks, too long probably, we'd say now, and you knew those patients well. Today, even with major things, people are out within 72 hours or so.

"And there was very good continuity of care. Relatively small amounts of patients, relatively small things you could do for them, and the ward sisters really taught me as a houseman - they could pick out the patient that was going off when a junior doctor might not have perceived it.

"And all the doctors lived in the mess. So if there was something that was a bit worrying there were colleagues and a very experienced senior registrar, who was usually there until 11 o'clock at night, who you could discuss things with.

"My consultant had a relatively big private practice and was paid only for his big ward round two or three times a week. But he insisted I rang him every night between 6pm and 6.30pm to check all was well. His commitment to his own houseman and patients was tremendous."

By the time Professor Turner-Stokes was a junior doctor in the early 1980s the intensity of medicine had risen. There were drips that needed adjusting, machines that could monitor patients.

She says: "You'd come on duty at nine o'clock, work through the night, and go off at five the following day. You'd then go home for the night and come back at nine o'clock and work through the night to the following day. And every alternative weekend you'd come in on the Friday and go home the following Monday night.

"How did I feel? Tired. But you had a room in the doctor's residence and most of us were so tired we didn't go home on the nights off. But the people who were off-duty would often cook dinner for the people who were on . . . You made some very good friends. Your shoes were cleaned at night and somebody brought you a cup of tea and a paper in the morning to make sure you got to the ward on time."

For newly qualified Dr Turner-Stokes, still in the foothills of her medical career, the experience of night work involves little of the camaraderie or clinical support enjoyed by her mother and grandmother - and patients, she believes, are unquestionably less safe for it.

"When mum was a junior you lived in the hospital and you could expect to get some sleep on the nights you were on call.

"When you are on nights now, there is absolutely no way you will ever sleep.

"At many of the hospitals where I have worked as a student, there were three doctors covering the entire hospital at night.

"It is a random team of doctors. And that means if they are called because someone is 'going off' on a ward, it takes thousands of times longer because they know nothing about [the patients]. They have to look through all the notes. Talking to the nurses doesn't really help because they work shifts same as us.

"I couldn't imagine having one night off in six months . . . I've shadowed a lot of people at night and it is . . . absolutely horrendous. There are just so few of you, you just don't know the patients and it is unsafe. It is absolutely dangerous. Everyone thinks it is dangerous.

"It is the patients who lose out in this, as well as it being stressful for the juniors."

Prof Turner-Stokes, in some ways, has had the toughest deal - training in the era of one-in-two nights and now, as a consultant, regularly called out of hours. Consultants of her mother's generation might have had a tier of experienced juniors below them who could cope with many cases.

"The juniors no longer provide the out-of-hours cover," she says. "I do Friday to Sunday, which means I can't go away at weekends . . . We are quite regularly rung. I do wonder whether the current generation . . . will feel happy to provide that sort of cover."

Her daughter says she has seen doctors literally ordered off the wards, so anxious are managers that the working-time provisions are not breached.

"It is absolutely disastrous for our training, which has a huge implication for future patient care as well. Someone worked out the other day that we need the equivalent of another six years of training if we work only 48 hours a week.

"I'm sure some people are pleased we work only 48 hours. But the juniors hate it when they have to leave half way through something. They don't feel they are giving the best quality of care. And certainly I, and most of us, don't want in 10 years' time to be just a generation of poorly trained, inexperienced consultants who can't take the workloads the current consultants can.

"But I am afraid that is where we are going to be if that's the way our training goes."