WENDY

WENDY© stands for web enabled diary card collection, a new piece of functionality within DRS (Doctors Rostering System) that supports the monitoring of junior doctors hours and development of rotas for local use. WENDY© will assist trusts working with Skills for Health - Workforce Projects Team in collecting multiprofessional activity data during the daytime, out of hours or at night as necessary and as part of their Teamwork Handover and Escalation and 24:7 pilots.

Already used successfully by over 180 trusts and other organisations, it provides analysis and data management tools along with Ministerial Returns and re-banding functions. The data can be fed back into DRS for reporting and analysis and can provide customisable graphs and charts that can be pasted straight into presentations and reports. WENDY will be available to all trusts very shortly.

How it works

‘Activity Sets’ are collections of descriptions of different tasks doctors or other clinical staff might perform during a shift. WENDY allows trusts to use available activity sets, such as the one provided in the Hospital at Night implementation pack; or a trust can chose to design its own activity set according to local requirements. WENDY also allows for activity sets to be modified during a study in response to interim results, maximising the efficacy of a study.

Good activity analysis not only allows a trust to gather accurate information about what their doctors are doing and when they are doing it; it also allows doctors to self-assess the appropriateness of the work doctors and clinical staff are carrying out. Good activity analysis can provide invaluable information, not only the efficiency of service delivery, but also the educational value of having a particular doctor on a particular shift. As the WTD drives down hours, this understanding of where and when good training takes place will become paramount to providing the best possible training to doctors within the NHS.

It is vital that when a trust decides to produce an activity study, clinicians are involved in every stage of planning. Good planning not only ensures that the study is practical (that doctors have enough time to return requested information) but also that doctors and managers have ensured the right questions are being asked. WENDY comes with a checklist for each study, developed with the NHS Hospital at Night team, that makes sure all the appropriate questions have been asked when designing the study, and that all the appropriate people have been involved in answering them.

WENDY can also be used simply to measure work and rest, giving reliable and rapid New Deal and WTD analysis, providing real time alerts when targets are breached, allowing study managers to monitor response and quality of data and send electronic reminders when necessary.

WENDY will form part of a suite of web-based tools currently being developed that includes online support and analysis that will be free to all NHS trusts and organisations. For further information you can contact Sarah Connelly (sarah.connelly@london.nhs.uk) or Dan Hughes (dan.hughes@skillsforhealth.org.uk).