Rostering for medical trainees
HosPortal has always been strong for rostering medical Consultants (‘Attending’ doctors if you are reading this in the USA or Canada), being the staff specialists and visiting medical officers (VMOs) that are the most senior doctors in each of their their clinical areas.
There are different challenges when rostering trainees, particularly the most junior ones like Junior Medical Officers (JMOs) below Registrar level that have not yet determined their clinical specialty:
They move regularly between teams
The teams can be as disparate as surgery, intensive care and mental health, all of which have their own rostering quirks and requirements
Roster administrators are bound by more specific over-working rules and employment award structures, and there is increasing societal focus on ensuring trainees doctors are not exploited by working them too hard
There are specific types of supervision required which may depend on the activity the trainee is doing.
We have had considerable success in expanding to trainees already. But we are also on the way to significant enhancements that will improve the way we address all of these trainee rostering challenges.
Things we do well today include:
Flexible team structures, that recognise how narrow areas of specialty are part of larger clinical groups
Flexible and efficient permission structures that allow even the most complex hospital to be set up in a way that is not overwhelming for the doctors and the administrators, and
A powerful rules engine that assists administrators implement the requirements of almost any medical staffing award (and many rules that are beyond the awards, too).
Features we have in the pipeline that all customers will have access to later this year include:
A supervision module, that will allow precise control of what supervision is required for what activity. This feature is also suitable for managing International Medical Graduates. It will allow administrators to quickly audit who does not have the required level of supervision and which supervisors are under-utilised. It also has the sophistication to say that, for instance, two mid-level trainees can supervise each other on specific tasks, but require a more senior supervising staff member for others.
A term preferences module. Trainees often need to express preferences for the 4-5 training rotations they do in a year. These term preferences need to take each trainees preferences, career plans and their training requirements (‘need to do one more surgical term next year’) to generate the term structures. This will then allow administrators to map out each trainee’s terms and, in turn, build each trainee’s detailed rosters each term.
We believe we are ready to go for trainees now - our existing customers seem to think so. But we will be even better placed when you are thinking about your 2025 trainees towards the end of the year. Please get in touch if you want to know more so you can plan for next year.
