What level of on-call cover is required to allow trainees to meet minimum faculty requirements?

We investigated whether trainees' out-of-hours experience in Wales is sufficient to allow them to meet Faculty training requirements. We also determined how much time on call, covering what population, allows trainees to meet these requirements.

Using Welsh on-call audit data, we inferred the number of calls that trainees would receive during training and compared this with requirements for on-call experience. We generalized the analysis to examine the effect of changes in the population size covered and the length of time on call on the likelihood of trainees meeting minimum requirements.

Trainees in Wales can expect to achieve most on-call faculty requirements. However, the expected number of contacts with the Health Protection Agency, 0.95 [95% confidence interval (CI): 0.024-5.281], and Environmental Health, 1.90 (95% CI: 0.230-6.848), imply that trainees may have difficulty achieving requirement 2.4. For different requirements at a set population size, widely disparate lengths of time are necessary to be 95% certain of achievement.

Most on-call requirements can be readily achieved in Wales, but contact with other professional groups (requirement 2.4) cannot be guaranteed. Further analysis suggests that requirement 2.4 is unlikely to be achieved except at unrealistic times on the on-call rota covering unrealistic populations.