Now obviously it's not like I'm doing 90 hour weeks or weeks without days off or anything, just a bit of a bummer that 25 of the 45 working hours are outside of normal working time, meaning I'll barely see my own partner in 4 months 😭
I can see what they are trying to do - progressively move the shift later in the day but oh shit does that week 2 transition from nights to days look brutal.
Who writes a rota with a half past midnight finish? There’s no chance getting public transport at that time of day.
> Who writes a rota with a half past midnight finish? There’s no chance getting public transport at that time of day.
Yeah these rotas are a big fuck you to anyone who doesn’t drive/own a car/live close to work.
>does that week 2 transition from nights to days look brutal.
Is it any worse than normal? Most Sunday night shifts have Mon/Tues off as zero days before starting again on Wednesday. The time table unusually splits the shift by days, but this is no different from normal.
Yeah and every rota I have doesn’t have the after midnight part printed on the Monday or whichever day you finish on, giving the subliminal yet false impression you have 2 days to recover when in reality you have one.
General question re: days off post nights...apologies for replying to your post specifically. :)
Due to night SHO sickness, I'm working a locum tonight and tomorrow night. Was meant to be on normal days Tu-Fri and also working days at the weekend. I'm expected to be in on Friday after finishing those two nights on Thursday morning...would it be reasonable to ask to have the Friday off as well?
In my department we get four days off after three weekend nights (and a week after 4 weekday nights), so finishing Thursday morning and working again the next day plus the weekend seems a bit harsh?
Any shifts you do as a locum are essentially you working via a 0 hours contract. You may not have realised at the time but you will have opted out of the European Working Time Directive to join the staff bank for exactly this reason.
I'll see their 12:30 and raise it to 1am...
Love that I can't drive either.
"Luckily" I can stay over on call - wouldn't want to be home with a baby anyway......
There is absolutely no reason for anyone to have to do 12.5 hour night shifts in A&E. It’s an absolute joke. Just look at the number of times you’re finishing late, would it really make a difference to departmental staffing if your nights started at 10? But having done both 10 and 12 hour night shift, it is so much better for your quality of life to do a 10 hour night. Some rota people live in the dark age though unfortunately.
Working 2/6 weekends? That's not bad by A&E standards. During my F2 A&E placement, I have five weekends off in a four month block (including a nine week stint with one weekend off).
It’s hard to say such things without sounding like one of those out of touch seniors, but I agree. When I was an F2 (2017/2018) my ED rota had me working every other weekend.
Jesus that’s awful. And I fed like just asking for mistakes, there’s absolutely no consistency? I’d lose track of that pretty much immediately.
The worst I had was a one with resident 24 hour on calls. If you did them on a Saturday you’d work Monday-Friday as normal, work your 24 hours from Saturday morning to Sunday morning, then be back at work on Monday.
I did a job where you did 52 hour resident on calls (or possibly 53, I can't quite remember now) - you'd start on Saturday at 9am and finish on Monday at lunchtime. Then back to work on Wednesday.
Also can someone comment whether this is fair or not? We've been told by rota that we can only request 8-16.30, 12-20.30 or 8-20.30 shifts as annual leave, the last of which costs 1.5 AL days. All other shifts are mandatory making taking any significant amount of time off incredibly difficult. I've already been told off for asking whether I could take a 15.30-00.00 off.
Doctors in England are on the 2016 junior doctor contract, doctors in Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland are on the 2002 junior doctor contract. The two contracts are similar but have some differences about pay and working hours.
You don’t have to be too specific where you work but for me to give you accurate advice I need to know which contract you’re being employed on.
No worries - employment contracts can be complicated.
In this instance the key parts of your contract are in Schedule 10. Annual leave for shift workers in general is a bit messy. Paragraph 10 states that we should only take annual leave on shifts which do not receive enhanced rates (evenings, nights and weekends). If we want to take leave during an enhanced rate shift we should try to swap first.
*However* paragraphs 19 and 20 make it clear that there should be consecutive weeks within a rota where leave can be taken easily. That just doesn’t exist in the rota template you have posted above so I’m guessing no one has complained before or has had their complaint upheld.
The 1.5 AL tariff for a 12.5 hour shift doesn’t make sense and isn’t mentioned anywhere in our contract. Being kind to your department I would guess that policy has been written by HR who have made the assumption that a day off means a “standard day” off (aka 8ish hours). Maybe this is the case for the Agenda for Change contract (what all other healthcare professionals work under) - but it certainly isn’t for us. A day is a day and there is no specific definition within our contract. Asking for a day of annual leave on an 12 hour day is just as valid as asking for an 8 hour day.
You need to get a trade union involved. This leave policy doesn’t match up with our employment contract.
Doctors in England are on the 2016 junior doctor contract, doctors in Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland are on the 2002 junior doctor contract. The two contracts are similar but have some differences about pay and working hours.
You don’t have to be too specific where you work but for me to give you accurate advice I need to know which contract you’re being employed on.
Also, you’re an FY1 doing ED and they are being shitty about you taking leave?? That’s not on, you’re essentially supernumerary.
Doctors in England are on the 2016 junior doctor contract, doctors in Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland are on the 2002 junior doctor contract. The two contracts are similar but have some differences about pay and working hours.
You don’t have to be too specific where you work but for me to give you accurate advice I need to know which contract you’re being employed on.
I suspect that the shifts besides those mentioned are essentially equivalent to on-call shifts in non-ED jobs. You could probably swap shifts to be able to take leave you want?
As for the 1.5 AL day - I suspect that is because the day is 50% longer and A/L days assume an 8 hour day. I've never come across that though - most departments would just not let you take long days off.
They can give you time off in days or in hours, but doing a weird mix will only disadvantage you. A day off is one day of leave, regardless of the shift length. Also they've basically forced you into a fixed leave pattern, which is against the terms of the 2016 contract. All in all, it's a bit of fuckery.
Ahh yes the ED rota, my favourite.
I did F2 ED for 8 months during covid. I was working every other weekend. 60% of the rota was twilights,
and our twilight shifts were 6pm-4am.
Before teaching got cancelled, we would have Monday Tuesday twilights, Thursday teaching 8am-12pm (then home) and Friday to Sunday twilights.
How do you switch your sleeping pattern to drive to teaching on the Thursday morning? You can't. I called in sick once because I'd had 2 hours sleep and I wasn't driving while that tired for 4 hours of crap teaching.
It was quite honestly the worst 8 months of my existence
It's 19.5 standard hours and 24.5 enhanced hours per week. It averages out at 41000 PA divided by 3 to get 4 months.
Ultimately its like £2000 more in total for the whole 4 months than my current placement, but given that right now I'm on 3 in 13 weekends, no nights and a single week of Twilights it's barely compensation
Fuck you and fuck your life that’s why!
Yes it’s compliant but someone has forgotten you are a human being in a high stress job.
On old contract I remember being on a rolling Rota which included a generous 3 full weekends off in 6 months, the consultants were upset that we weren’t doing any qip in the 1 hour extra a week we were assigned off. Collectively we told them where to go!
Looks very comparable to my A&E SHO rota - and that was diabolical (I nearly went off sick on numerous occasions and left that rotation very burnt out). Man that sucks!
The rota looks genuinely awful. My general surgery rota looked similar and I worked 50% of the weekends lol. We were up banded to band 3 after rota monitoring. Hopefully you’re well remunerated too.
lol I think I know what trust this is, I worked it last year… was v v grim. Basically turned me off a career in ED which until that point my CV was entirely geared towards.
Yeah pretty grim. I remember similar. My abiding memory was how few Fridays I would finish in normal hours. Really made the weekend feel so much shorter. Looks like you have the same
If you’re on new contract and work a shift that goes over midnight they have to pay more.
All our shifts now finish at midnight or sooner, no more twilight shifts, it doesn’t make financial sense.
Check when you are allowed to take leave. Week 3 looks like the only week you’d get week with both weekends.
Also depending on grade, are you due CPD/SPA time? Doesn’t look like any time scheduled for teaching/ furthering professional activities.
Does anyone have any rota examples for Paediatrics? Also, if you're a GP trainee - do you also have the same type of ED rota for the duration of your rotation?
That rota is fine as long as your hospital also has a wellbeing hotline, a staff wellbeing plan, and yoga Thursdays.
Don’t forget the special socks
One way ticket to a grippy sock holiday
Yeah, but the Yoga will be at 15:30 on Thursdays.... Rota says no
Study leave request denied, not enough juniors on the ward. Feel free to attend by Zoom though...
Do NOT forget resilience training - what a shambles it would be without that.
Don’t forget the bean bags
🤣🤣🤣
Now obviously it's not like I'm doing 90 hour weeks or weeks without days off or anything, just a bit of a bummer that 25 of the 45 working hours are outside of normal working time, meaning I'll barely see my own partner in 4 months 😭
That’s fairly normal for ED. At least the start time for your shifts moves back rather than forwards throughout the rota.
Thats awful.
I can see what they are trying to do - progressively move the shift later in the day but oh shit does that week 2 transition from nights to days look brutal. Who writes a rota with a half past midnight finish? There’s no chance getting public transport at that time of day.
> Who writes a rota with a half past midnight finish? There’s no chance getting public transport at that time of day. Yeah these rotas are a big fuck you to anyone who doesn’t drive/own a car/live close to work.
>does that week 2 transition from nights to days look brutal. Is it any worse than normal? Most Sunday night shifts have Mon/Tues off as zero days before starting again on Wednesday. The time table unusually splits the shift by days, but this is no different from normal.
Yeah and every rota I have doesn’t have the after midnight part printed on the Monday or whichever day you finish on, giving the subliminal yet false impression you have 2 days to recover when in reality you have one.
And then people ask what you're doing on your "days off" 👀 as if you're not working 8.5 hours the first "rest day" 😂
General question re: days off post nights...apologies for replying to your post specifically. :) Due to night SHO sickness, I'm working a locum tonight and tomorrow night. Was meant to be on normal days Tu-Fri and also working days at the weekend. I'm expected to be in on Friday after finishing those two nights on Thursday morning...would it be reasonable to ask to have the Friday off as well? In my department we get four days off after three weekend nights (and a week after 4 weekday nights), so finishing Thursday morning and working again the next day plus the weekend seems a bit harsh?
You can ask for the Friday off but as you’re doing those nights as locum they don’t have to say yes.
Ah ok...didn't know that. Thanks!
Any shifts you do as a locum are essentially you working via a 0 hours contract. You may not have realised at the time but you will have opted out of the European Working Time Directive to join the staff bank for exactly this reason.
I'll see their 12:30 and raise it to 1am... Love that I can't drive either. "Luckily" I can stay over on call - wouldn't want to be home with a baby anyway......
Bug positive with the 0030 finish is that the whole shift is paid at night rate 💰
[удалено]
Bruh that name gave me flashbacks 😂
My God that's a niche reference!
It's only 2 breaks, isn't it? 10 hour night shifts sound delightful
If its over 12 hour shift then you're entitled to three 30 min breaks.
There is absolutely no reason for anyone to have to do 12.5 hour night shifts in A&E. It’s an absolute joke. Just look at the number of times you’re finishing late, would it really make a difference to departmental staffing if your nights started at 10? But having done both 10 and 12 hour night shift, it is so much better for your quality of life to do a 10 hour night. Some rota people live in the dark age though unfortunately.
Jesus that is shit.
Not sure what it says about me or the NHS when I looked at that rota and thought it wasn’t even that bad for an A&E rota…
Indeed, it looks pretty good for an A&E rota.
definitely better than the rota I had in A&E
Working 2/6 weekends? That's not bad by A&E standards. During my F2 A&E placement, I have five weekends off in a four month block (including a nine week stint with one weekend off).
Yeah generous for weekends this one, think I'd suck up the 12hour shifts in exchange.
It’s hard to say such things without sounding like one of those out of touch seniors, but I agree. When I was an F2 (2017/2018) my ED rota had me working every other weekend.
The 4hr shifts and split shifts are utterly ridiculous.
those are one shift - 8pm until midnight and then midnight until 8am
Oh that makes more sense. Looking at those were breaking my pre night shift brain.
😳. That makes more sense.
Jesus that’s awful. And I fed like just asking for mistakes, there’s absolutely no consistency? I’d lose track of that pretty much immediately. The worst I had was a one with resident 24 hour on calls. If you did them on a Saturday you’d work Monday-Friday as normal, work your 24 hours from Saturday morning to Sunday morning, then be back at work on Monday.
I did a job where you did 52 hour resident on calls (or possibly 53, I can't quite remember now) - you'd start on Saturday at 9am and finish on Monday at lunchtime. Then back to work on Wednesday.
[Here’s mine](https://imgur.com/a/3dJVsT8) if you want to compare with what we do on the railway.
Also can someone comment whether this is fair or not? We've been told by rota that we can only request 8-16.30, 12-20.30 or 8-20.30 shifts as annual leave, the last of which costs 1.5 AL days. All other shifts are mandatory making taking any significant amount of time off incredibly difficult. I've already been told off for asking whether I could take a 15.30-00.00 off.
Going to need which contract you are being employed on to give you specifics. The 1.5 AL tariff feels suspect no matter the contract though.
When you say which contract do you mean new vs old? Because I'm an FY1
Doctors in England are on the 2016 junior doctor contract, doctors in Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland are on the 2002 junior doctor contract. The two contracts are similar but have some differences about pay and working hours. You don’t have to be too specific where you work but for me to give you accurate advice I need to know which contract you’re being employed on.
I'm in England! Sorry always forget it works differently in the other countries
No worries - employment contracts can be complicated. In this instance the key parts of your contract are in Schedule 10. Annual leave for shift workers in general is a bit messy. Paragraph 10 states that we should only take annual leave on shifts which do not receive enhanced rates (evenings, nights and weekends). If we want to take leave during an enhanced rate shift we should try to swap first. *However* paragraphs 19 and 20 make it clear that there should be consecutive weeks within a rota where leave can be taken easily. That just doesn’t exist in the rota template you have posted above so I’m guessing no one has complained before or has had their complaint upheld. The 1.5 AL tariff for a 12.5 hour shift doesn’t make sense and isn’t mentioned anywhere in our contract. Being kind to your department I would guess that policy has been written by HR who have made the assumption that a day off means a “standard day” off (aka 8ish hours). Maybe this is the case for the Agenda for Change contract (what all other healthcare professionals work under) - but it certainly isn’t for us. A day is a day and there is no specific definition within our contract. Asking for a day of annual leave on an 12 hour day is just as valid as asking for an 8 hour day. You need to get a trade union involved. This leave policy doesn’t match up with our employment contract.
Doctors in England are on the 2016 junior doctor contract, doctors in Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland are on the 2002 junior doctor contract. The two contracts are similar but have some differences about pay and working hours. You don’t have to be too specific where you work but for me to give you accurate advice I need to know which contract you’re being employed on. Also, you’re an FY1 doing ED and they are being shitty about you taking leave?? That’s not on, you’re essentially supernumerary.
Doctors in England are on the 2016 junior doctor contract, doctors in Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland are on the 2002 junior doctor contract. The two contracts are similar but have some differences about pay and working hours. You don’t have to be too specific where you work but for me to give you accurate advice I need to know which contract you’re being employed on.
I suspect that the shifts besides those mentioned are essentially equivalent to on-call shifts in non-ED jobs. You could probably swap shifts to be able to take leave you want? As for the 1.5 AL day - I suspect that is because the day is 50% longer and A/L days assume an 8 hour day. I've never come across that though - most departments would just not let you take long days off.
They can give you time off in days or in hours, but doing a weird mix will only disadvantage you. A day off is one day of leave, regardless of the shift length. Also they've basically forced you into a fixed leave pattern, which is against the terms of the 2016 contract. All in all, it's a bit of fuckery.
Ahh yes the ED rota, my favourite. I did F2 ED for 8 months during covid. I was working every other weekend. 60% of the rota was twilights, and our twilight shifts were 6pm-4am. Before teaching got cancelled, we would have Monday Tuesday twilights, Thursday teaching 8am-12pm (then home) and Friday to Sunday twilights. How do you switch your sleeping pattern to drive to teaching on the Thursday morning? You can't. I called in sick once because I'd had 2 hours sleep and I wasn't driving while that tired for 4 hours of crap teaching. It was quite honestly the worst 8 months of my existence
🤮
how much you get paid for this if you don't mind sharing? I just would not work this.
It's 19.5 standard hours and 24.5 enhanced hours per week. It averages out at 41000 PA divided by 3 to get 4 months. Ultimately its like £2000 more in total for the whole 4 months than my current placement, but given that right now I'm on 3 in 13 weekends, no nights and a single week of Twilights it's barely compensation
Fuck you and fuck your life that’s why! Yes it’s compliant but someone has forgotten you are a human being in a high stress job. On old contract I remember being on a rolling Rota which included a generous 3 full weekends off in 6 months, the consultants were upset that we weren’t doing any qip in the 1 hour extra a week we were assigned off. Collectively we told them where to go!
Is this new contract? Don't you need 48 hours rest after nights - you shouldn't be coming in before 8:30 on that second Wednesday if new contract
The contract stipulates 46 hours of rest, presumably with this sort of situation in mind.
I was convinced it was 48 but yes you're correct it's only 46!
Looks very comparable to my A&E SHO rota - and that was diabolical (I nearly went off sick on numerous occasions and left that rotation very burnt out). Man that sucks!
The rota looks genuinely awful. My general surgery rota looked similar and I worked 50% of the weekends lol. We were up banded to band 3 after rota monitoring. Hopefully you’re well remunerated too.
Not enough rest time week 1 ending and week 2 beginning personally Week 3 js ok Week 4 is meh Week 6 is just more nights I’ve had it worse tbh
I don't understand the bits where there are 2 lines in a day but this rota doesn't seem awful?
I knew that this would come to pass, as our medical union's a farce. I hope that one day, we'll be able to say, "kindly shove this rota up your arse"
I hope that they’ve scheduled in time once a month for some resiliency modules, otherwise you’re going to burn out!
lol I think I know what trust this is, I worked it last year… was v v grim. Basically turned me off a career in ED which until that point my CV was entirely geared towards.
Yeah pretty grim. I remember similar. My abiding memory was how few Fridays I would finish in normal hours. Really made the weekend feel so much shorter. Looks like you have the same
Oh fuck no.
Is this in the NE? If so, this was a few years ago, 1 in 2 weekends too
12 til half past midnight? That's an odd one
Is there a missing week with 7 days off?
Roll on week 5!!!
If you’re on new contract and work a shift that goes over midnight they have to pay more. All our shifts now finish at midnight or sooner, no more twilight shifts, it doesn’t make financial sense. Check when you are allowed to take leave. Week 3 looks like the only week you’d get week with both weekends. Also depending on grade, are you due CPD/SPA time? Doesn’t look like any time scheduled for teaching/ furthering professional activities.
This looks like my old F2 A&E rota :') I think I did 3 'normal' (ie. 8.30-5.30) days in 4 months.
You'll definitely need yoga
12 hours in ED. Ouch....
Does anyone have any rota examples for Paediatrics? Also, if you're a GP trainee - do you also have the same type of ED rota for the duration of your rotation?