Priority templates with standard activities

Creating a Priority template can sometimes have a knock-on effect when scheduled into a person's job plan.  This knock-on effect is where the Priority template causes clashes with standard activities in an individual's job plan. There are some elements of the Priority template where you can be more flexible in order to prevent these conflicts and which should be considered before allocating to individuals.

Conflicts occur when two or more activities happen simultaneously. Due to variations in practice across a department, there may be different start and end times for an individual’s standard activities compared to those of colleagues. As a result, some job plans experience conflicts between the priority template and standard activities, while others do not.

To provide a consistent amount for their on-call while at the same time not causing a clash in their job plan, we would recommend the use of “Does not conflict” in Priority templates.

Does not conflict

This option should be used when building a priority template but NOT in all templates. It provides the ability to double count hours/minutes. This would realistically happen only for small periods of time, such as handovers.

1. Define the activity – ensuring that the appropriate Attending/priority work is selected.  These are activities that happen every week of the year and this is shared out amongst the clinicians.
2. Define the Type of working – there may be some Normal hours – these would be predictable periods of resident work such as ward rounds.  Or it may be defined as On-call hours which is generally a non-resident period with a certain number of hours expected to be worked. The benefit of using On-call hours is that you can define the Supplement and average hours.
3. Define the Supplement including any days, times and average hours associated with the on-call.

4. Selecting the Does not conflict option will allow the activity to not cause a conflict in individuals' job plans. It will still count all the PAs and will display any conflicts in the schedule of the individual's job plan.