Rotas, Shift Patterns and Banding in Medicine Speciality Training Programmes of East Midlands Deanery

Specialty School of Medicine, East Midlands Deanery (South)

The programme descriptions for Medical Speciality Training currently deliberately do not contain detailed or guaranteed descriptions of the rotas, shift patterns and banding payments which will apply during run-trough training.

Specifically, the University Hospitals of Leicester NHS Trust, is actively working to reduce junior doctors hours to comply with the 48-hour working week and to reduce banding payments to a minimum. Their aim was to develop and provisionally re-band majority of our rotas templates, for implementation between January and August 2007. All other hospitals in our programmes will also need to impliment the 48-hour working week during the training programmes of all individuals who are appointed for August 2007 and subsequently.

Programme descriptions have been updated to reflect this position – and any rota details which have been overlooked in this review must be interpreted merely as a description of the current status for trainees in the old SHO and SpR grades and not as a description of future rotas and banding for new appointments at ST1, ST2 and ST3+

Since none of the run-through programmes to be appointed in 2007 will have a fixed programme of rotation from appointment through to CCT, Human Resources advise that descriptions of all posts in our programmes should be interpreted as follows:

“As this post does not have a specific set rotation, in line with the NHS Employers Interpretation of pay protection the postholder will receive confirmation from of the term and condition of service (including banding supplement), only after a specific post has been allocated to the post holder. The banding supplement payable to the postholder will be the pay band applicable to the rota at the time when a specific post is allocated. Pay protection will not be applied from date of appointment.”

In line with this situation, if you are offered a training post as part of the 2007 MTAS application round, then we are advised that human resources will offer a post on the following basis:

"This is a confirmation of your training placement, and not an offer of employment.  Each Trust on the rotational training programme will send you an appointment letter and confirm the terms and conditions of employment to be offered in your contract with them as soon as possible”