Published Article e-Rostering an Emergency – How COVID-19 forced our Trust to implement e-Rostering within 2 weeks
During the initial COVID-19 pandemic, it quickly became apparent that the Trust’s understanding of its medical workforce deployment was inadequate. A review by Dr M Johnson, Dr S Gardner Buckinghamshire Healthcare NHS Trust, UK published in BMJ Leaders.
Background
Stoke Mandeville Hospital is a district general hospital in Aylesbury, Buckinghamshire. It is part of Buckinghamshire Healthcare NHS Trust. The project involved the Division of Integrated Medicine at the Trust.
During the initial COVID-19 pandemic, it quickly became apparent that the Trust’s understanding of its medical workforce deployment was inadequate. With many doctors redeployed from other services, increased staff sickness and COVID-19 self-isolation, the existing manual rostering practices were insufficient. The Trust had no global overview of where doctors were deployed.
Lessons Learnt
- Information governance clearance remains a challenge to cloud-based IT solutions and can delay rollout.
- Simple, clear contractual terms are refreshing for NHS organisations, allowing the implementation of new software at pace.
- e-Rostering saves time, but to fully benefit rota coordinators must be adequately resourced to adjust deployment daily. A Clinical Lead is useful for acute decisions on safe and suitable flexible staffing.Messages for Others
- e-Rostering can be implemented at pace to reach a high-quality eventual solution.
- Early stakeholder and end-user engagement is crucial in IT projects to achieve thebest final product.
- An agile healthcare organisation can act decisively to implement new IT solutions faster than previously thought possible.
HealthRota allows our Trust’s doctors, managers and administrators easily to view the deployment of the workforce in real time on desktop and mobile. All sickness and absence is updated immediately.
Results
The effectiveness of the solution was determined through feedback from the rota coordinators, along with before-and-after questionnaires of clinicians using the software. 95% of junior doctors had used the system within one month of launch, with 60% using the mobile application.
Doctors’ understanding of their own and their colleagues’ deployment (using a Likert scale, Mann Whitney U) was significantly improved. The change was well received by rota coordinators, who achieved a greater overview of the deployment of medical staff, anecdotally reducing their dependency on locum staff.
For the full study, please use the ‘Download’ link.