How do I record my consultant of the week?

Modified on Mon, 22 Jul, 2024 at 3:17 PM

The consultant of the week (COW) model of inpatient care means the consultants' primary focus is to deliver ward-based care daily and would replace routine work for the same period. Depending on the COW requirements, the same person may perform other duties such as weekend work and on-call at the same time.

An example of COW would be:

Number of consultants = 10

Coverage = Mon-Fri (08:30-17:30)

Occurences = 52/10 = 5.2

This means that each consultant works 5.2 Mondays, Tuesdays, Wednesdays, Thursdays, and Fridays – totalling 26 weekdays across the year. Adding this as an activity is simple and can be done in the following way:

Define the Activity as normal – ensuring that the relevant Category, Type, and Activity have been selected. If the relevant activity selection is not available you should ask your Administrator for guidance.
Certain activities in your setup will automatically provide the “Schedule” option to select this as a “Priority activity”.
Once you have selected “Priority activity”, you will only be able to create this as “Scheduled” and not “Annualised” and “Non-scheduled”. This is because the number of occurrences throughout the year already takes into account the increased number of occurrences
Complete the rest of the activity details and save. As this is already recorded as a priority activity, you should not need to select any further “Options”.

NOTE: Where the COW is the same across the department (including partial shares for part-time clinicians) it may be preferable for the activities to be added via a Priority Template. In this scenario, you may need to raise the query with your line manager or System Administrator.