RT Journal Article
SR Electronic
T1 G384(P) No news isn’t necessarily good news: regional experience of exception reporting by trainees
JF Archives of Disease in Childhood
JO Arch Dis Child
FD BMJ Publishing Group Ltd and Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health
SP A137
OP A137
DO 10.1136/archdischild-2020-rcpch.328
VO 105
IS Suppl 1
A1 S Steadman
A1 D Aguirre
A1 D Kenyon- Blair
A1 H Cooper
A1 M O’Keeffe
A1 R Negrine
A1 H Goodyear
A1 Paediatric Research Across the Midlands Network
YR 2020
UL http://adc.bmj.com/content/105/Suppl_1/A137.2.abstract
AB Aims As part of a wider piece of work looking into the ‘8 High Impact Interventions to Improve the Working Lives of Junior Doctors’ document, we gathered data on trainees’ experience of how often they worked beyond their scheduled hours, then their experience of the exception reporting systems. The system is designed to allow doctors to report concerns that compromise their safety or training, to allow trusts to remedy the issues in a timely fashion.Methods A voluntary questionnaire was designed based on the ‘8 High Impact Actions to Improve the Working Environment for Junior Doctors’ document by NHS Improvement. This was circulated on paper at trainees’ regional teaching days and online via Survey Monkey from December 2018-March 2019.Results Responses were received from 47% (143/306) of trainees. 18% (124/136) reported working over their scheduled hours daily, 37% (50/136) reported working over hours weekly. 88% (116/132) of trainees stated they had never exception reported.Of the remainder:4% (5/132) reported once7% (9/132) reported some but not all the time1% (1/132) reported every timeReasons cited for not reporting include:’Too time consuming’ (25%, 34/136)’Nothing will change’(10%, 14/136)’Working over hours is normal/expected’ (10%, 14/136)’Don’t know how to report’ (10%, 14/136)’Worried about perceptions’ (8%, 10/136)Conclusions Based on our regional data, it is likely that exception reports submitted to trusts are only part of the picture regarding trainees working over scheduled hours. Trainees do not complete exception reports for a range of reasons as cited above.The process of exception reporting should be reviewed and culture surrounding it explored if it is to be an accurate reflection of activity. This would hopefully lead to an increase in trainees’ confidence in the system and improved engagement, to facilitate its role as a tool for safe working. Regionally, this data has been fed back to RCPCH tutors to explore how they can support trainees and trusts in taking this important work forward.