The Irish Medical Organisation has sought a meeting with health employers to discuss the implications for doctors of this week's Accident and Emergency deal with the nursing unions.
The National Council of the Irish Hospital Consultants' Association meets tomorrow to consider its attitude to the deal.
Nurses in the Irish Nurses' Organisation and SIPTU yesterday voted to suspend their work-to-rule in A&E departments from 8 a.m. today for five weeks to allow new arrangements on admission and discharge to be implemented.
Nurses favour the creation of an agreed formula which would enable bed managers to cancel planned admissions where a certain number of emergency patients had been waiting for beds for more than a certain number of hours.
The "emergency response" formula would also allow bed managers to ask consultants to do extra ward rounds to see if there were any in-patients who could be sent home or to nursing homes.
This has raised concerns among doctors in the IMO and the IHCA who say consultants have a contractual obligation to each patient and that this includes making the decision on whether a patient is ready to be discharged. This obligation cannot be put to one side, they argue.
The nursing unions have expressed confidence that these concerns can be addressed. The general secretary of the Irish Nurses' Organisation, Mr Liam Doran, said consultants would still be the people who would discharge patients but that they might be asked to do an extra round in the day or on a Saturday.