Dozens of health professionals, including doctors, nurses and paramedics, are dying of fatal drug overdoses every year, and some of them are using drugs found in their workplaces.

There were 404 fatal drug overdoses among health professionals between 2003 and 2013, with an average of 37 each year, a study of coronial investigations has found.

Nurses - particularly females - dominate the group, accounting for 63 per cent of the deaths. They were followed by mostly male doctors, who made up 18 per cent of the deaths.The remaining groups were psychologists, paramedics, physiotherapists, pharmacists, dentists, and veterinarians.

While half of the deaths were documented as intentional, 38 per cent were unintentional. The researchers said the latter was "alarming given that health care professionals are presumably highly skilled in the appropriate administration of drugs, but made fatal errors in self-administration".