Successful Monitoring of Junior Doctors’ Hours at Salford Royal NHS Foundation Trust

It is a contractual obligation for individual trusts to monitor junior doctors’ hours every six months, to make certain that they are compliant with the Junior Doctor Contract (known as New Deal), and that doctors’ pay is correct, yet this process is carried out with variable success across the North West. Therefore Health Education England’s Junior Doctor Advisory Team (JDAT) reviewed a selection of monitoring exercises across the North West, all of which had taken place in the last five years. The total number reviewed was 734, of which only 401 (55%) achieved a valid return rate.One of the best performing trusts, based upon this review, was Salford Royal NHS Foundation Trust (SRFT) whose success is underpinned by a clear understanding of the importance of the monitoring process, support from management and senior consultants and a clear structured approach. At SRFT there is a good understanding at board level of the importance of monitoring and this feeds down to consultants and divisional management.