One of the country’s largest teaching hospitals appealed to all its junior doctors regardless of experience or specialty to help staff its two emergency departments including a major trauma centre.
Leeds Teaching Hospitals Trust sent an email last week to all junior doctors asking for help covering day shifts, night shifts or part-time shifts to fill gaps in its rota on Saturday and Sunday last weekend. The trust appealed to all junior doctors to cover shifts at Leeds General Infirmary
The trust told HSJ it sent the email after agency and locum staff declined work at the hospitals despite offers to pay above NHS Improvement’s cap on locum pay rates.
Royal College of Emergency Medicine president Clifford Mann told HSJ the issue was indicative of the national shortage in emergency medicine doctors.
Full story in the HSJ 30 June 2016