Six weeks' notice of the on-call roster: fact or fantasy? An audit study

Work-life balance is directly linked to morale, job satisfaction and staff retention - all of which are linked to high quality patient care. Receiving the duty roster in advance is the first step towards achieving any work-life balance, but anecdotally doctors frequently receive very little notice of this. This audit assessed NHS trusts' compliance with the Code of Practice, with specific reference to advance notification of duty rosters.

The duty roster should be made available 6 weeks before commencement of post. The initial audit comprised a survey sent to all London surgical CT1s starting in October 2016. The interventions introduced following this were creation of a shared spreadsheet containing roster coordinator contact details, reminder emails sent to roster coordinators and distribution of results to NHS Improvement. A repeat survey was sent to all London surgical CT1s and CT2s starting in October 2017.

In the initial audit 48/88 (55%) responded, of whom 4/48 (8%) received their duty roster in accordance with the standard and 9/48 (19%) did not receive the roster at all before starting. A total of 40/48 (83%) of trainees had to make specific contact with their future NHS trust in order to obtain their roster. In this initial audit 12/48 (25%) of trainees were satisfied or very satisfied with the amount of notice given. In the reaudit 133/178 (75%) responded, of whom 23/133 (17%) had received their roster in accordance with the standard and 25/133 (19%) did not receive the roster at all before starting. A total of 97/133 (73%) of trainees had to make specific contact with their future NHS trust in order to obtain their roster. In the reaudit 56/133 (42%) of trainees were satisfied or very satisfied with the amount of notice given.

This closed loop audit led to a doubling in the proportion of trainees receiving their rosters in accordance with the standard, and this was associated with an increase in trainee satisfaction levels. However, adherence to the standard remained low in both phases of the audit, and a significant proportion of trainees continue to commence jobs without any knowledge of their on-call roster. A range of measures is proposed to address this.