Thinking of Extending the Surgical Team in Your Hospital?

Watch our videos below for six different perspectives on the surgical care team.

Advice on how to extend your hospital's surgical care team.

1. New models should be driven by clearly identified needs – primarily, by the need to improve patient care and the patient experience as well as to optimise surgical training.
2. Ideally, adoption of new and extended roles should reflect a strategic approach to the multiprofessional workforce – there needs to be support across the organisation, and these roles need to be fully integrated into governance structures and standard operating procedures.
3. Be clear about routes of entry and create pathways for existing staff to grow into these roles.
4. Understand the commitment required in terms of in-house training and competence assessment – it may mean making sure there is time in consultant job plans for this.
5. Make sure there is clarity over lines of accountability – clinically, managerially and professionally – and how ongoing performance will be assessed (particularly for staff undertaking medical tasks).
6. Develop a structured pathway for career progression – to help retain bright and able staff but also to maximise the benefit the service can derive from these roles.
7. Identify budgets to support continuing professional development and study leave requirements, in order to develop and enhance these roles.
8. Invite those who are sceptical to see how such roles could help them – having consultants introduce and explain the wider team also validates the new set-up.
9. Titles can be an artificial barrier – ‘It’s not important what you call them, it’s more about what training they have had to give them the competencies’
10. Acknowledge the role played by the multi-professional team in training junior doctors – this should lead to clearer expectations of this training.
11. Deploy the multi-professional team in ways that make best use of their skill set, and delegate the right level of autonomy and decision making – don’t just give them the tasks that junior doctors are not doing.
12. Consider how to utilise the leadership capabilities of these staff – particularly experienced staff working in extended roles – to the benefit of the wider workforce.