27.02.18
Rosters should be created with overview of all staffing groups, trust lead argues
The future of NHS rostering should see the creation of a single job to oversee the staffing of all staffing communities, it has been suggested by a trust lead.
Speaking at an NHS Confederation roundtable meeting yesterday to discuss medical rostering, Darren Kilroy, deputy medical director at the Countess of Chester Hospital NHS Foundation Trust said that their rosters should be created with an overview of all staffing groups, not just the medical team.
Kilroy added that whilst this view of medics being “special” does still exist, it is getting less prevalent, which he said was helpful.
He explained that although there are systems in place for transparency, visibility, rostering and planning, it is nobody’s job to look at the deployment of all staff: “The ward managers look at the nursing staff.
“They don't look at the physios, OTs and AHPs,” he explained. “The medical staff look after the medical staff and the junior doctors - mainly junior doctors, not really senior doctors as much.
“The AHPs, physios, OTs and all the other people who are really crucial for discharge planning and for timely flow are separately rostered and managed.”
He argued that the next step could be the creation of roles where the job is to have an oversight of all of those healthcare roles, going as far as to suggest the role should have an oversight of deployment of the entire health and social care systems.
“You could argue that needs deployment oversight of that system, being simplistic about it, from primary care, through to hospital care to social care.
“Someone, in an ideal world, should have oversight of all that, which is a huge task, to see how well deployment all knits together.
“But we manage it at very small individual local level.”
And June Johnson, medical staffing manager at Norfolk and Suffolk NHS Foundation Trust said that there is still a notion that “medics are special” that can create a disconnect.
“I don’t think the management have got that they're no different to anybody else’s complexities,” she continued.
“You just need to get over that barrier sometimes. That’s why sometimes things fall down because they don't know necessarily what to do so they don't do anything.”
The panel agreed that, although this is not likely to be achieved in the current lifetime, all areas need to have an awareness of other areas.
Kilroy added: “In terms of leadership and where the next steps are, we still have a body of work to do regarding local clinical leadership of the individual bits.”
Top image: Jirsak
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