A new initiative led by St Helens and Knowsley Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust has gone live with 6 trusts to form a collaborative staff bank to pool their temporary staff and automate shifts for clinical trainees.
The North West Doctors in Training Collaborative Staff Bank is being formed to enable up to 35 trusts in the region to broadcast shifts to clinical trainees working within the North West’s network of hospitals. The group said it predicts that 27,000 shifts will be booked through the system during the first six months.
The staff bank is said to act as a secondary bank for participating hospitals, allowing them to broadcast shifts they have been unable to fill through their own primary hospital bank.
6 trusts went live in early November, and 18 trusts are engaged in a phased implementation to go live throughout the coming months.
Technology from Patchwork is being used for the trusts to broadcast shifts and healthcare professionals to book shifts through its app.
Claire Scrafton, Deputy Director of HR, St Helens and Knowsley Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust, said: “St Helens and Knowsley Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust is really excited to see this vision become a reality. Working with Patchwork and our colleagues across the North West Region, the benefits and opportunities of the initiative are really starting to come to fruition.”
“The impact of implementing this new digital, collaborative system will not only support our host trust colleagues in achieving greater fill rates, but will also work to reduce the regional reliance on agencies, enabling us to support our collective pool of skilled clinical trainees as they embrace the digitisation of bank shift management.”
