NHS Medical Director, Professor Sir Bruce Keogh, has announced that junior doctors will now be required to spend a minimum of four working days shadowing the job that they will be taking up, in a bid to improve patient safety.
The first few weeks of employment for medical graduates can not only be stressful but are also associated with increased risk for patients and NHS employers. The Department of Health has asked Medical Education England for advice on enabling junior doctors to make the transition from student to doctor and employee in the safest way possible. According to research supported by Dr Foster Intelligence in 2009, people admitted to English hospitals in an emergency on the first Wednesday in August have, on average, a 6% higher mortality rate than people admitted on the previous Wednesday. Prof. Sir Bruce Keogh, said: “There is some evidence of increased risk to patients as new doctors take their first steps. So, learning from pilots undertaken across the country, we have agreed that all new first year doctors should undertake a period of paid shadowing the doctor they will be replacing, for at least four days.” Three pilots were carried out at University Hospitals Bristol NHS Foundation Trust, Cambridge/University of East Anglia, and Cardiff Medical School. The results from Bristol showed that, in the first four months, mistakes by new doctors were reduced by 52% after a week of shadowing and targeted, mandatory teaching. Dr Rebecca Aspinall, consultant anaesthetist and programme director for doctors training at UH Bristol, said: “Patient safety is at the heart of medical education. We recognised that our outgoing first year doctors could educate the new intake of junior doctors if their employment overlapped by a few days. The outgoing doctors’ collective memory and experience was used to design the teaching for incoming junior doctors. “The resulting course is called ‘From Scared to Prepared’. It contains aspects of patient care the doctors wished they had done better. Attendance of this course has reduced our frequency of errors and made patients safer year on year. I am delighted that the Department of Health has recommended this innovation across the UK.”
