Using electronic communication tools and new working patterns to improve night-time inpatient care in a district general hospital

To redefine out-of-hours medical cover in order to improve patient care while supporting medical training. The project was to be cost neutral and to reduce locum use. A project team was appointed. An initial workload study was conducted in order to ascertain the workload of individual teams. Rotas for medicine, general surgery, urology, orthopaedics, ENT and anaesthetics were redesigned. A pool of four foundation doctors (FY1 and FY2) working across all specialties was created. The ENT and …