The role of Guardian of Safe Working hours was introduced to support the implementation and maintenance of the new (2016) national contract for Doctors in Training and provides an independent oversight of working hours and education / training.
The process of exception reporting provides data on trainees’ working hours and can be used to record safety concerns related to these and rota gaps. It is aimed at improving trainee welfare - and patient care & safety and has the potential to be a real driver for change in the short and long term. In addition exception reporting can be used to identify missed training opportunities. The guardian provides a written report to the Board of Directors every 3 months and an annual report is sent to the GMC, CQC & NHSE.
We would be really pleased to meet you at our Resident Doctors Forum which takes place in the doctors mess on the second Tuesday of each month from 1 to 2pm, with pizza provided. It is an opportunity to have your voice heard, and feedback areas of good practice and areas of improvement required. It is through this, and spotting of trends in the exception reporting system that we have been able to drive change. We regularly analyse trends in exception reports, and it only takes a few minutes to fill in an exception report (see ‘How to Exception Report’ poster).
Changes that have been made include:
- support for F1 resident doctors starting on night shifts
- business cases for extra posts
- numerous work schedule and workforce reviews
- rostering on a rota was changed so that bank holidays would be rostered in the same way as weekends
- clarification of escalation pathways on a rota where residents struggled to take leave
- improvement of clinical supervision on a rota
- highlighting of finishing times for a department where residents were staying late but were not required to
Contact information
Guardian of Safe Working (CUH)
Dr Serena Goon
serena.goon1@nhs.net
Guardian of Safe Working Administrator (CUH)
Charlene Champ
cuh.guardian@nhs.net
The Exception Reporting How to Guide and Exception Reporting Additional Info for Residents documents are available at the bottom of this page.